Two Ugly Men
by DarthGrievi
Summary: After the events of InFamous, Cole MacGrath hears reports of a disaster in Manhattan, along with rumors of another superpowered individual. Can he survive in the city long enough to unravel the mystery behind Alex Mercer?
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **Yes, I did an InFamous/Prototype crossover. So sue me. This one is intended to be mostly serious, since both characters are quite serious. However, I promise this series won't be without its points of giggle-worthy hijinks. Also, I'm not sure how noticeable it is, but I've only played InFamous by proxy, i.e. I watched while my cousin played. I assume Empire City is to the south of New York, probably on the East Coast somewhere. Maybe off the coast of Maryland or something, I don't know.

Rated M due to some strong language and zombie murder, because they're people too!

Finally, be aware this is _not_, under any circumstances, spoiler-free for either game. Most of InFamous's are from the endgame, while Prototype's start from about half-way through.

* * *

"Reports are still coming in on the release of the biological weapon in Manhattan Island. The perpetrator, former Gentek scientist Alexander Mercer, has gone missing after escaping from a morgue, originally thought to be dead. The government has enacted a quarantine of the island to prevent the spread of the highly infectious virus, and has dispatched several relief units and medical supplies to help those infected…"

Cole MacGrath lay on his back in the small room, listening to the broadcast over a portable radio. He briefly considered turning it off, perhaps even replacing its noise with that of the police scanner, but something caught his ear.

"…Rumors have begun spreading that Mercer himself is under the effects of the virus, and that he has begun attacking citizens. Some claim that he has even gained _superpowers_ from it."

This last word had been said with more than a hint of sarcasm, but Cole knew all too well that superhuman abilities weren't as far fetched as they seemed. The reporter continued on, but Cole was barely listening. All manner of speculation was running through his mind. What if this man was another Conduit? Worse still, what if he was connected somehow to The Beast, that being of unthinkable destruction? Considering that this Mercer had just released a plague on Manhattan, chances were that he was a threat.

There was only one thing to do; he had to go see for himself and, if necessary, stop this man now while he was still contained.

Could he afford to leave now? Empire City was still mostly in ruins, but the crime rate was down, and the quarantine had been lifted, allowing supplies to come through. The Reapers were in retreat, the First Sons had left, and the Dust Men were within manageable levels. The local police could take care of things for a few days while he was gone, he assured himself, though even as he began packing his bags he was having second thoughts, a number of doomsday scenarios playing out in his head.

"Its too great a risk. If I don't go, I'll regret it later…" he muttered to himself as he folded and stuffed another set of clothes into his backpack. He shut off the radio, which had long since moved onto other topics and, making sure to lock the door behind him, left the small apartment he'd rented following his final confrontation with Kessler. He still didn't completely trust Zeke.

Leaping carefully onto the top of a moving train, he rode it partway around its track, the occasional pedestrian pointing and shouting happily. Cole had started to get used to it by now, but all the publicity sometimes got to him…

Skillfully, he jumped off the train, landing with a roll at street level, and without missing a beat began running south towards the bridge that connected the three islands of Empire City to the mainland. He remembered coming here, not all that long ago, accompanied by Zeke and hundreds of other civilians. Though they had managed to get past several of the barricades, ultimately the attempt to break the quarantine had failed. It felt almost bizarre to now be able to simply cross the bridge with no resistance. The steel doors hadn't been taken down yet, but he was allowed to pass through. He was given a few questioning glances as he jogged across, and one fellow traveler asked him exactly where he thought he was going.

"To visit someone on the mainland," Cole replied, pausing only briefly to talk to the man. He had lied, of course. If word got around that the local hero was going to be gone for several days, maybe even a few weeks, any criminal organization that thought it could gain the upper hand would attempt a takeover. No, it was better if people did not know he was going to be gone for very long.

For the first time since gaining his new powers, Cole finally set foot on the far end of the bridge. He cast a quick glance behind him, taking in the familiar skyline of Empire City one last time before continuing on his journey northwards.

He nearly started heading for the bus station, but recalled that motor vehicles had a nasty tendency to explode when he sat in them. Public transportation was most certainly out of the question…

_This is going to be one long walk..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **I'd put this at about late Day 9, with Cole leaving around Day 6. Which means... well, you'll see. Yes, I have a timeline going here. I'm a stickler for accuracy and continuity.

* * *

The rail beneath Cole's feet squealed and crackled with coursing electricity as he slid along its surface. He'd actually been quite surprised that he'd made such great time, just three days out. He could see the tall spires of the suspension bridge ahead, and a feeling of anticipation washed over him as he quickened his pace. The scenery whizzed by almost serenely, until the loud blaring of a train horn jerked him out of his thoughts.

He immediately jumped off the track, cutting his momentum with a roll, and looked behind him. The locomotive was far behind him and heading the other way, but he'd been justified in trying to get out of its path. He was fast, yes, but compared to a train at full speed he wasn't much more than an old man putting along in the slow lane. He'd already had one too many close encounters with the front end of and engine.

Cole decided to stay off the track for now. He was close enough as it was, and he wasn't sure whether this end of the bridge was blocked off. The last thing he needed was to be caught trying to sneak in before he'd even managed to leave the mainland. The only option was to go under the bridge.

As he jogged alongside the rails, he waited for the point where the entire track would lift itself off the ground to meet with the bridge, and when it did, he skillfully climbed over the edge and onto one of the support struts below. With almost unnatural ease, he navigated the maze of pipes, poles, and steel bars, doing his best not to look down once he had reached the bridge proper. It wasn't the heights that made him nervous, no. It was hard to have acrophobia when you could survive most falls. What kept his eyes on the path ahead was the water that lay below him. As hard as he tried, he could not help but think of the consequences should he slip, the beam below him break, or any number of catastrophes. He and water no longer mixed.

The sun had already set as he finally prepared to set foot on Manhattan Island. Cole smiled slightly at his timing; any later and he would have had trouble crossing the bridge, any earlier and he might not be able to slip in undetected. As it was, it was just dark enough for him to hide in the shadows while he waited for an opportunity to jump down. As he approached the land, the steady rattle of automatic machine gun fire reached his ears, along with the more bass thumping of something of a larger caliber, likely a turret of some sort. More worrying, though, was the rumbling of a tank engine, the vehicle's identity confirmed by a single deafening cannon shot that shook the whole bridge, sending flakes of paint and rust falling to the street below.

Minutes later, Cole was standing atop a wide steel beam spanning across the street below. Looking down, the place was in chaos. Several cars were left abandoned, and a twenty-taxi pileup could be seen just down the road. Trash was everywhere, blowing in the wind and littering the gutters. What at first seemed to be confused citizens milling about soon resolved themselves into… he knew he was going to regret saying this, but zombies. For all intents and purposes, they looked, acted, and, once there was a lull in the machine gun fire, sounded like zombies. He half expected them to start moaning for brains. It almost made him think Empire City had had it easy…

The sky darkened further as he waited for the zombies to disperse, or at least thin out a bit. He didn't want to start taking pot shots at them yet, for fear that it would do nothing more than draw the attention of the rest of the hoard. He paced quietly back and forth on the beam for quite some time before finally sitting down, gearing himself to drop down. The zombies were just as prevalent as they had been when he first arrived, and showed no signs of leaving.

Cole was about to jump down to street level when the rumbling of tank engines grew noticeably louder. Peering below the bridge and down the street, he spotted three tanks rolling his way, blasting indiscriminately away at the swarm of zombies ahead, sending chunks of both asphalt and bodies flying, along with the occasional car. They passed beneath him, crushing the taxies below their treads as they continued on toward some unknown target, lighting up the night with their cannon blasts. Once they had gone, Cole took advantage of the situation and lightly dropped into the carnage below.

He'd seen more than his fair share of gunshot wounds, he'd seen the people he'd fried with his electricity, he'd seen people crushed by cars, dropped from enormous heights, and covered in mind-controlling tar, but as he stood there among the wreckage he was shocked by the sheer amount of gore that lay around him. Bodies were strewn about, more often than not missing a limb or three, but some had been turned into nothing more than a red smear under the tanks' treads. He severely hoped that the rest of the city wasn't like this...


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **Hunters Ahoy! Also, our first sighting! Makes you wonder how Alex attacking the Infected would look to an outsider. No one ever guesses amnesia. My chapters seem to be getting longer and longer...

* * *

Cole wandered for most of that night, staying on the rooftops whenever he could. He'd found that a few quick zaps would down most of the zombies below, but they came in such numbers that he didn't want to risk them overwhelming him. Then there were the more heavily mutated ones, the ones that had their limbs sharpened into blades and rudimentary claws, covered in blood and barely looking human. These moved faster, lasted longer, and sometimes followed him up the sides of buildings, moving with unnatural speed. They were few and far between, but the thought of running into them kept him alert long into the night, along with the tortured, thunderous screams of some distant beast that he made his priority to avoid at all costs.

As the sky lightened and the sun poked above the horizon, Cole noticed that the number of zombies was trailing off. Citizens, normal people began so show up, and the sound of gunshots could be heard ahead. He didn't stop to ask anyone what was going on, and no one noticed him in turn, both parties attention focused on staying alive and dodging the blows of the oncoming monsters. He just kept running like the others, every so often climbing up a wall to get a better view of where he was going. On one such scouting trip, he spotted a single tank and several marines making a stand against the horde. Citizens scrambled desperately over the wall of bodies their gunfire had created, certain that beyond this line of defense lay safety. Once he was within their view, he stopped actively using his powers, blending into the crowd. He wasn't sure what their reaction would be, especially in such a tense situation.

He passed the marines without incident, being led with the rest of the refugees to a safer, more fortified area near one of the temporary bases the military had set up. The atmosphere was a blessed relief from the crawling horror he'd just come out of, but he couldn't help but feel uneasy here as well. Unmanned drones circled overhead, doing precisely what, he couldn't quite tell. Military trucks and tanks were constantly rolling down the streets, and hardly a moment passed when one couldn't hear a helicopter overhead. It was stiffing, to say the least. He would have to find a way to sleep, for a little while at least, as he was exhausted from the long night.

After taking his short nap on the roof of a building near the base, he started his investigation proper. Cole highly doubted that the military would just hand out information on this Alex Mercer, even if they knew that he was capable of fighting him. Besides, considering his past experiences, he didn't entirely trust the government in these matters. In his mind, it was better that he work alone, to track down Mercer himself. Still, he was without a lead at this point. Rather than wander aimlessly about Manhattan, he decided to have the military help him, though not directly. Jumping across the rooftops, he headed for the nearby base, landing silently atop it. The only structure on the roof was a large device with four glowing green lights, one on each side. It made no change in his presence, and had no cameras attached, so he ignored it for now.

Below him, the troops milled about. Cole couldn't hear their transmissions from here, but it didn't matter. All he had to do was wait. If something big happened nearby, he would be able to tell just by watching the deployment of the soldiers below, watching to see if they started leaving in droves, accompanied by tanks.

Hours passed, but the level of activity remained constant, and Cole was starting to doubt the supposed ingenuity of his plan. He was considering other tactics when an alarm went up. Just as he had hoped for, the marines loaded up and the armored vehicles all started to roll out. Cole climbed down to street level as discretely as he could, and soon began trailing the attack force. They moved faster than he could run, but all he had to do was follow the freshly crushed cars and tread tracks. They led him out of the military occupied zone and back into zombie territory, or infected, as he had learned they were called. It was a bioweapon after all. As he followed the trail, he briefly thought of his own safety. All the troops he'd seen had been wearing gas masks of some sort. Was this thing airborne? He hoped like hell it wasn't. His immune system had been boosted by his contact with the Ray Sphere, but he wasn't certain of its limits. He put the thought out of his mind for now as he noticed that the tread marks now ran parallel to a raised set of train tracks. He climbed swiftly up and began grinding along the rails, using the opportunity to catch up.

He sped along at a rapid pace, always keeping an eye on the trail below in case it swerved and took a turn away from the tracks. Electricity crackled and arced in a gaudy show as he made his way towards whatever had caused such a disturbance.

A bellowing roar echoed off the buildings surrounding him, followed by several, less powerful calls, one terrifyingly close behind him. Urging himself onward, Cole only let himself a brief look back. Crawling unnaturally along the side of a building was what looked to be a pinkish, hairless gorilla, perhaps with a bit of large cat mixed in, and it was following him. Cole picked up his pace, hoping to outrun it, hearing it crash onto the tracks behind him with another scream. Its bounding footfalls and heavy breathing, despite his best efforts, grew louder and louder in his ears. In a final, desperate effort, Cole leapt of the track, spinning around in midair to face the beast, firing off bolts of electricity into its eyeless head. The creature let out a final, ear-piercing shriek before collapsing onto the gravel, dead.

Feeling proud of himself, Cole briefly examined the fallen beast. Its skin was wet and smooth, covering a lean, well muscled body. Its head lacked eyes as far as he could tell, having only two black, sunken patches where they would be. The copious amounts of blood surrounding its mouth made obvious what this thing ate. It might have been human once, but Cole doubted it…

He was about to continue on his way, following the tanks, when he spotted a dark figure in the distance ahead, running along the tracks. Moments later, the figure was joined by an even larger, more dog-like version of the creature he'd just killed, running on all fours. The pair approached him at blinding speed, closing the gap between them at an astonishing rate. The first of the two, a man in a black jacket and grey hood, sprinted past him, shoving him brutally to the ground as he passed. Stunned by the blow, he laid where he was. The hulking beast pounded by his prone form moments later, obviously more interested in the man than him, snarling and bellowing as it passed. Cole turned his head to watch them go picking himself up slowly, and as they faded into the distance, he caught sight of the man's left arm transforming, lashing out and striking the creature, almost like a whip.

"Mercer…" He growled. He was about to give chase when the man leapt off the raised tracks several stories into the air, ran up the side of the nearest building, and disappeared into the urban maze that was Manhattan, the beast in hot pursuit. Cole grumbled in frustration. He was simply too slow to follow him over long distances. He cursed under his breath and headed in the direction Mercer had went anyway.

Something struck him as odd, though. Alex Mercer was the one who had started this infection in the first place. Why was he attacking the creature, and why was the creature attacking him? One would think that the person who had released this disease wouldn't be trying to harm one of its victims.

_Perhaps…_ he thought as he jumped down from the raised tracks and back onto the streets, _Perhaps it was an accident. Or there's more than one superhuman involved here…_


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **Yup, still getting longer... Point of View change, yey! I kind of felt that I was giving Cole a little bit too much attention. Raise your hand if you think the Thermobaric Tank was the single best part of the game. Especially stealing the free ones from the events "Rolling Thunder" and "Demolition." Its the Alex Mercer of tanks. Also, I suck at military speak, despite constantly hearing it in the game.

_

* * *

This Mercer is a hard man to find..._

Cole gritted his teeth and grumbled in frustration as yet another hour passed without even a hint of a sighting. As it was, it'd been nearly a full day since he'd first encountered the man, and he hadn't the slightest clue where he was now. Manhattan was simply too big of an area to search, even as confined as it was, not only in terms of square milage, but vertically as well. Skyscrapers blocked anyone from seeing beyond just down the street, and Mercer could move expertly among them, taking advantage of every nook and cranny, using every alleyway, balcony, and billboard to his advantage. To say that it was infuriating was an understatement.

He decided now that if he ever ran into Mercer again, he would have to act quickly and decisively. Anything at all that would get him to slow his breakneck pace would be worth the risk of attracting too much attention. He was already tired of waiting for Mercer to show himself, and the longer he stayed out, the bigger the chance that something would happen to Empire City. At this, he felt a brief pang of homesickness, but ignored it. This game of cat and mouse had to end now.

He'd seen Mercer attacking the agents of the infection. With any luck, Cole could draw him out by causing a large enough disturbance in his general area. A plan in mind, he set out towards the nearest infected zone, draining electricity from rooftop air-conditioning units in preparation for the coming fight for his life. He approached the edge of the final rooftop and looked down. Among the scattered, abandoned cars wandered dozens of the infected citizens, searching for prey, someone new to add to their ranks. Cole watched them for a few moments before gathering his energy and plummeting to the ground, releasing a shockwave of electricity as he hit.

Cars and bodies flew everywhere. Most of the zombies in the immediate area had been electrocuted, static still arcing from their bodies. Several cars exploded, their gas tanks set alight by stray sparks. As the smoke just started to clear, Cole drew more energy from the unexploded vehicles around him and let loose a barrage of energy bolts, felling the last few zombies still standing. He could hear the machinery of the military behind him, the snarls of the horde in front of him, and all around him, the echoes of electricity crackling bounced off the buildings... 

* * *

Alex Mercer, however, was rather preoccupied at the moment. Throwing yet another hunter over his shoulder, he cast a quick glance at the Thermobaric Tank parked nearby. The hunter howled in pain as it slammed into the ground, spasming a few times before finally falling limp.

_That's it, that's the last one..._ he thought, looking expectantly at the military's new weapon. All he had to do was make sure it stayed safe until the convoy reached the center hive, where his sister was being held. He felt a deep, nagging concern as he thought of Dana in there, something otherwise alien to his mental state. He had little regard for his own safety nowadays, seeing just how much it took to take him out, and he couldn't help but feel that everyone else was just a means to an end...

His thoughts were interrupted as a massive red tentacle emerged from the ground just as the Thermobaric Tank moved into position. All number of obscenities raced through his mind as he sprinted towards the new foe, but he was too late. The claw-like end of the tentacle slammed into the tank, leaving it intact but incapacitating everyone inside. With no other choice, Alex climbed inside. This mission was now up to him, and he wasn't going to let anything get between him and Dana.

The targeted hive cracked open with one shot from the tank, making light work of what would have taken an entire task force otherwise. He certainly wasn't one to wax poetic, but something about being inside this explosion factory on treads made him... almost happy. The goal completed, Alex turned the machine around and headed as straight as he could for the central hive, crushing lowly infected and annihilating anything too large to fall prey to the treads.

"Electrical disturbance in sector 35-A. Requesting backup."  
"Roger. Chalk 3 en route --"

Alex barely paid any attention to the transmissions. As long as they weren't about him, he could care less. The tank shook around him as he fired off another of the devastating rounds, its roar cutting off the rest of the message. Outside, the shell of the central hive, what used to be the Museum of Natural History, caved in under the sheer force of the blast. A hint of a smile crept over his face as he popped open the hatch above him and climbed out, the vial of weaponized cancer carefully tucked away, ready to be used the moment he encountered Greene.

Had he known what lay inside, he might have opted to take the tank with him... 

* * *

"Dammit, Mercer, where the hell are you?!" Cole shouted to no one in particular as he caused another taxi to explode behind him, taking out a cluster of infected. His plan was failing, failing miserably. He'd been out here for hours and was starting to tire of the constant violence, having to relocate twice thanks to military investigation. He didn't want the military involved in this, not yet at least...

Three more cars erupted into flames in quick succession as he yelled in frustration and aggravation. Over the crackling of the flames and the noises of the horde, though, he became aware of the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Moments later, shards of the material rained down on him, scratching his skin with their sharp edges. Shielding his face and looking upwards, he saw the figure of a man silhouetted against the glare of the skyscraper's array of windows.

With a short laugh of both relief and excitement, Cole ran ahead while Mercer was busy scaling the building, climbing up a shorter one himself to get off the streets. The last thing he needed was to both track the speed demon and fight off advancing infected at the same time.

A solid thud ahead of him informed him that Mercer had already started to move. Cole pulled himself over the threshold and onto the roof just in time to see him running off, holding someone in his arms. Cursing to himself, he did his best to keep pace, his original plan of attacking Mercer nullified by his precious cargo. Whoever he was carrying, Cole didn't want to risk harming them as well as his target, and with the latter bounding across the rooftops at inhuman speed, getting an accurate shot in was out of the question.

The chase fared better than he had expected. After several minutes of madly scrambling up walls, around billboards, across streets, and over the roofs of New York, Mercer had remained in sight. Just when he'd thought he'd lost him, though, he would spot him bounding over another rooftop several blocks ahead, as if taunting him onwards. Fortunately for Cole's sake, he seemed to be heading in a relatively straight line, as if he knew exactly where he was going.

After what seemed like an unbearably long time, a nearly exhausted Cole MacGrath crested the final building between him and Mercer. Looking out ahead, he could see only St. Paul's Hospital in front of him, and beyond that the water beyond, but Mercer was nowhere in sight. Not giving up, though, he climbed down to street level, blending in with the crowd of pedestrians and troops patrolling the area. He crossed the street, aware of all the armed men around him, and walked across the parking lot, inconspicuously draining electricity from a van as he passed by. His fatigue lessened noticeably as he rounded a corner, scanning the area.

Then he saw him. The hooded man stepped out from one of the hospital's many doors, whoever he was carrying notably absent. He calmly strolled away, seemingly unaware that someone was watching him, in fact running to catch up with him, shoving people out of the way to get closer, to get a clear shot. Cole's vision was blocked for a brief instant as he moved a particularly large woman out of his path, but when he could once again see straight, there was no sign of his target.

Frantically searching the crowd, then the nearby buildings, Cole's rage and aggravation bubbled up to a head. A single, resounding curse was uttered out of frustration, loud enough to turn more than a few heads in his direction. He didn't care. This was insane, simply insane. He might as well be chasing ghosts at this rate.

After steaming for several more moments, Cole turned his attention to where Mercer had exited the building. It was a generally nondescript doorway, tucked into a corner and covered by a black awning. He approached it, hesitating for an instant before finally pushing it open.

The smell of sterilization wafted though as he entered the room. A lone doctor was tending to someone on one of the many tables around, most occupied by corpses covered with tumor-like growths.

"Perhaps you can finally tell me what's going on…" he said, approaching the doctor from behind.

"Look, I have no idea who you are..." the doctor replied, turning around to face him. Behind him, a young woman lay on an operating table, hooked up to a heart monitor. Was she the one that Mercer had brought in? The thought of him rescuing someone confused him slightly, as it didn't mesh with the picture he'd painted in his head of the man...

"I'm looking for Alex Mercer," Cole told him bluntly. The doctor, Ragland, judging by his name tag, simply raised an eyebrow.

"You don't look like Blackwatch."

"Who? I'm not with the military, if that's what you mean."

"Then who are you? I severely doubt you're some neighborhood vigilante."

"That's not important. I need to find him. He may be connected to the single greatest threat to humanity that has ever existed. He released this virus, I need to know who's side he's on." He didn't want to go into detail about Conduits and The Beast, but if he had to, he would.

"He's also the greatest asset we have against fighting this infection. He can do in a day what it takes thousands of men and untold amounts of military hardware to do in a week."

"But why? That's my question. Why would the man who willingly and knowingly sent this place to hell be so damn busy trying to clean it up? Why? Anyone else in his position would be using their power to help it spread. Why?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to ask _him_ that..."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **WARNING: OBVIOUS and MAJOR SPOILERS ahead! You may want to either beat [Prototype] or skip Alex's introspection if you are concerned about them. Poor Alex... Conspiracy theories! Nothing like trying to guess someone's motivations... Epic GlaDos quote is epic... Also, the single longest piece of dialogue yet. Hooray? If you can't tell by the lack of direct quotes in most of my work, I'm unsure about my skill in writing dialogue. Tell me what you think. Finally, I foresee great awkwardness when Cole finds out just who Dana is.

* * *

The deep red light of sunset washed over Cole as he glanced down at the map Dr. Ragland had given him. Straining to read in the low light, he checked his position against one of the three circled dots drawn on the map. According to it, he was right on top of one of them. He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for, as Ragland hadn't told him what these locations were, and it had been a battle to even convince him to give him this map in the first place. With Mercer nowhere in sight, Cole sent out an electric pulse, hoping to find something unusual. People, cars, tank, appliances, phone booth… wait…

Casually walking towards the lone pay phone and pretending to make a call, he slid his hand below the metal casing, feeling about for the small electronic device he had detected. His fingers touched something cold and smooth, and as he pulled it out from under the phone he saw it was an older model cellphone, something one could get pretty cheap nowadays. As he held it in his hand, it began to ring. Not sure what else to do, Cole went ahead and answered it.

"Sir, put the phone back. Its not meant for you," he was told the moment he put the cell up to his ear. The voice was deep, and slightly robotic, deliberately distorted to hide the man's identity.

"I know exactly who its meant for," Cole replied.

"Then put it back."

"Not until you tell me what you want with Alex Mercer."

"You first."

"I need to find him."

"Why?"

"I need to talk to him."

"Again, why?"

"I need to know whether he'll be a threat to the rest of the world once this damned quarantine is lifted."

There was a long pause on the other end, and for a moment Cole believed he had hung up on him.

"He could be. He might be. What do you plan to do about it?" the man eventually replied.

"If he is, I plan to eliminate him."

"You do realize he is quite possibly the most dangerous being on this side of the Mississippi."

_Oddly specific…_ "I'm confident I can handle him."

Another silence intervened, broken by a deep sigh on the other end of the line.

"You're either a fool or something… more. Look, I have him on a mission. He thinks he's infiltrating Blackwatch, but its a setup. We're testing a new weapon that just might turn the tide of this war."

"You've got something that can kill him?"

"Not just him, everyone and everything infected with the virus."

"Do you think he'll ever put it together that you set him up?"

"I hope not. I think he's too desperate for the truth to care. Listen, I can tell you where he's going to be tomorrow, but you need to keep him alive. I'm going to give him the location of several Bloodtox blowers…"

The man continued to explain his plan to Cole. Mercer would be in the area taking out the machines pumping the toxin into the air. It was harmless to humans, though, and Cole could wait in the cloud as long as he needed to for him to arrive. The man warned him that it would probably be best if he simply observed, as he still needed Mercer to trust him enough to help him with what he had planned later; a full on assault on the infection. Two setups in succession would certainly make him grow suspicious. Once he'd informed Cole of everything he felt he needed him to know, the mysterious voice finally hung up, leaving Cole standing by the phone booth, the sun completely set behind the horizon. He replaced the cellphone and, having nowhere else to go, began walking back to St. Peter's Hospital in the hopes that Dr. Ragland would let him stay the night.

The doctor was still slightly wary of him when he returned, but eventually agreed to let Cole sleep there for the night… but just that night. He didn't want to get wrapped up in this mess any further than he already was.

The woman Mercer had brought in earlier that day had awoken, seemingly fine despite Ragland's concern. She smiled sweetly at him when he entered one of the rooms connecting to the main operating room. A pair of hospital beds had been made up, and she was reclining in one, a laptop propped up on her knees. They had a brief discussion as Cole lay down on the other to rest. He learned her name was Dana, though she never gave him her surname. Admittedly, neither did Cole. He offered to see her home safely the next day, but she turned it down, saying that she felt it was better that she stayed here until Dr. Ragland was certain she was healthy.

He liked her, to put it bluntly. For the first time sonic he'd come to Manhattan, he'd been able to talk to someone about something other than his mission. For a brief hour, he managed to forget about hunting Mercer down, the nagging questions about his allegiances put out of his mind for now. He cautioned himself, though, that he would have to return to Empire City once this was all over.

The subject of their talk eventually turned to the plague that was sweeping across the island. It was hard to ignore it, no matter how hard one tried. Even this far from the infected areas, one only had to close their eyes and listen to the drone of helicopters overhead and the throaty growl of tank engines outside to be reminded of the state Manhattan was in.

"I don't know what it is," he told Dana, "but I plan to get to the bottom of it."

She chuckled slightly at this, as if fondly remembering. "You sound just like my brother." 

* * *

The crisp morning air whistled past Alex's disguised face as he skillfully glided between the buildings, over a hundred feet off the ground. He was distracted, though, barely paying attention to what was around him. The words of his contact were constantly running through his head.

_"Sound familiar?"  
F--k  
"You're the BLACKLIGHT virus."  
F--k!_

Even now, he wasn't sure what to make of it. He wasn't Alex Mercer. Hell, he wasn't even human. Dr. Alexander J. Mercer died in Penn Station… and he was no more the man than he was the soldier whose face he now wore. Arguably less so, in fact. At least when he became someone he'd consumed he had their memories, their experiences. Not so with Dr. Mercer…

He briefly thought about Dana. What would become of her now? Ultimately, he still cared for her. Could he continue pretending to be her brother? Would she still accept him is she knew the truth? The woman had already lost Alex once. He couldn't bear to put her through it again. His indecision frustrated him to no end, going against his entire life experience thus far. Never before had a piece of information so neatly thrown him off his footing, eating away at that single-minded, brutal determination that had colored his thoughts since the moment he had awoken in the morgue not even two weeks ago.

Up ahead he spotted the now familiar opaque red mist of a cloud of Bloodtox and focused on his mission for the time being. Switching to infrared to cut through the fog, he landed on a nearby rooftop as quietly as he could, not wanting to draw the attention of the Supersoldiers patrolling nearby. This was it, the first of the nine blowers in the area. Now the question was how to take them out without getting himself killed… Alex was certain he'd think of something cleverly strategic. 

* * *

Groaning in disgust at the smell of the toxic cloud, Cole stood mere feet away from the machine pumping it into the atmosphere around him. The stuff was harmless, yes; he'd practically been swimming in it for nearly an hour now. He could take a bath in this stuff. Put in on cereal, rub it right into his eyes... honestly, it wasn't toxic at all... but the contact had said nothing about its nearly unbearable stench, like a strange mixture of rotting meat, alcohol, and burning plastic. Now he knew why everyone was wearing gas masks…

Another one of the massive brutes passed by him in the mist, striding around like he owned the place. The man looked like a professional bodybuilder on steroids, if such a thing could be possible, standing maybe seven feet tall and so heavily muscled he looked about ready to rip right through his uniform if he so much as bent over. He noticed Cole standing nearby, and turned to face him, his expression unreadable behind his gas mask and the piece of scanning equipment he wore over his eyes.

"Listen, I know you people are trying to get away from the infected, but if you don't get out of here I'm going to have to arrest you. There's a safe zone just three block--"

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the crashing of metal against metal as a truck slammed into the blower, severely damaging it, followed by a taxi not two seconds later. Both Cole and the soldier dove out of the way of the resulting explosion as the truck's gas tank caught on fire. With the machine destroyed, the reddish mist began to clear, and Cole was forgotten as the military began sweeping the area, looking for the source of the attack. Taking his chance, Cole fled the scene, heading for the next blower. He wouldn't be able to keep pace with Mercer, but with any luck he could get there in time to watch him take it out.

It occurred to him as he jogged along the sidewalk, zapping approaching infected as he passed, that he had no idea exactly what Mercer was capable of. He was inhumanly strong, both physically and in terms of endurance, a barreling freight train of destruction, but beyond that, was there anything more? He had a feeling there was. The contact had called him the single most deadly being on the island, and though he was indeed dangerous, some of the infected beasts he'd encountered looked capable of inflicting far more damage with their claws than even Mercer could with just his fists. What had he seen on their first encounter? He could have sworn that the man's arm had lashed out at the creature chasing him, spanning the perhaps twenty foot gap between them. What had that been?

He got his answer as he neared the next blower. Mercer had already nearly reduced it to scrap, the fog already beginning to fade. His right arm, tipped with a vicious-looking set of blades, shot out into the Bloodtox cloud, extending maybe thirty feet before stopping, hitting the blower with a solid crunch and finally stopping its output of the compound. All the while, he was being fired upon by at least ten men, but didn't seem to care, not even flinching as bullet after bullet pierced his body. He _did_ notice, however, when a pair of the heavily-muscled soldiers began stomping in his direction, unnaturally fast for their size. His work with the Bloodtox blower finished, Mercer leapt into the air, his arm once again flinging out towards a nearby helicopter. Instead of destroying it, though, he reeled himself in, clinging to the vehicle just outside the cockpit. Cole watched in amazement as he tore off the door and threw the pilot out into the open air screaming in terror, landing on the pavement below as the hijacked helicopter flew off.

_God, what the hell am I getting into?_ he thought, still standing in place several minutes after the helicopter had left. He was dimly aware of the military heading off in the same direction, presumably to reinforce the positions at the other blowers. The raspy howl of one of the infected beasts finally snapped him out of his deep thought, and he climbed up a nearby building to continue thinking in relative peace.

Cole had originally believed that his ability to attack Mercer at range would be his key to eventually defeating him if needed. Now he wasn't so sure. Now it seemed that getting the first shot in and throwing Mercer off guard would be the only way he could even hope to take him down. He hoped like hell that it wouldn't come to that. Despite his violent actions, he almost wanted to believe that Mercer had acted out of desperation, his hand forced by the situation he'd found himself in, and that once this was all said and done, he would either disappear into anonymity or stay to protect New York from any further threats, as he himself had done for Empire City…


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **BOSSFIGHT! I have absolutely no idea what the heck those homing green orbs were that Greene spit out, so I conveniently left them out. I've also broken my "rule" of not having Cole use his powers with Alex knowing, as it would mess with Prototype's timeline. Eat it, hydra! First time writing from both viewpoints simultaneously. Tell me if it gets confusing.

* * *

Cole MacGrath approached the second of the three contact spots Dr. Ragland had given him. At this point, he wasn't overly concerned with finding Mercer; he knew who he was working for now, and exactly how to get in touch with them. With that in mind, he casually walked up to the seemingly ordinary phone booth, waiting for a few moments for the well-hidden cellphone beneath to start ringing. When nothing happened, he reached under and pulled it out, intending to make the call himself. The phone hadn't even cleared the underside of the booth when it began to chirp and beep.

"You again," the now familiar, disguised voice answered, "I thought I had scared you off the case."

"I already knew that I wasn't going up against something human. At least not perfectly human, anyway."

"You still have no idea what you're getting involved in."

"No sh--. And I want to know. You know what Mercer can do, perhaps even what he's become. I want in."

The other end of the line was silent, his informant once again considering just how much to give Cole.

"I don't want to say much over the phone. Its better that we discuss this in person. I'll plant the address In Times Square in a few hours. Meet me there at nine tonight."

Cole heard a click, and knew the man had hung up on him. He smiled to himself, happy that he was finally getting some real answers in this place. 

* * *

As stealthily as he could, Alex snuck up to the tank parked just outside the Bloodtox factory, doing his best to stay out of the suffocating cloud. A few stray wisps burned his nose and throat as he inhaled them, but he hid the pain masterfully. To anyone observing, nothing seemed out of place, just another Blackwatch commander climbing into an escort tank, ready to start the convoy to Times Square. From within his armored fortress, thankfully sealed off from the toxic mist around him, Alex ordered the Bloodtox pump to start its journey, perfectly imitating the voice and mannerisms of the commander he had just consumed. Not suspecting a thing, the tanks began to lumber off, and Alex maneuvered his to the front of the line. He was not letting this pump get destroyed. As much as he hated the stuff, Bloodtox was the only truly effective weapon the Marines had against the infection. No matter how many hunters they managed to kill, dozens more were ready to take their place; no matter how many hives they destroyed, another would always appear, sometimes in the rubble of the very one they had leveled, the infected super-organism stitching and melding the shattered pieces of concrete back together for the moment like a form of organic cement. This stab at the heart of the infection was probably their only real chance at winning this war.

Then what? Once Elizabeth Greene was killed, once the virus was cleaned up, once the quarantine was lifted and Manhattan began to recover, then what? For the first time, the end was in sight, or at least the beginning of the end. What would become of him once this was all over?

Use what he had learned to root out those responsible for BLACKLIGHT, for starters. If not for the public's sake then for his own desire for revenge and that strange, morbid curiosity that continually pushed him to investigate further, no matter what horrors he found in their minds. It all seemed rather hollow now that he knew who had released the infection, though, and _he_ was already dead. Now it was all just a matter of cleaning up the loose ends. But after even that, months, years, decades down the line? He simply didn't know, but knew his fate would hinge on his ability to successfully drop off of Blackwatch radar. They would hunt him until they either had him on a slab or had lost sight of him completely. Even then, he would have to remain careful...

He was jolted out of his thoughts as a trio of massive red tentacles ripped through the asphalt ahead of him, shrieking and squealing in an earsplitting tone. Calmly, he aimed the main cannon and fired at the nearest one, joined by two of the other tanks. Fortunately, the hydras focused their attention on the armored vehicles attacking them, tossing cars and chunks of concrete in an ultimately futile attempt to stop the constant bombardment by bullets and shells. Between the five of them, the tanks made short work of the hydras, continuing towards Times Square without so much as a scratch on the pump.

_Heh, this is going to be easy…_ Alex thought, urging the treaded vehicle forward to follow the convoy… 

* * *

Cole found himself later than day scaling the rooftops around Times Square. His contact had been unbelievably unhelpful in telling him exactly what he was looking for. For all he knew, the address could be scrawled on some wall, written on a piece of paper, or stored electronically on another cellphone or perhaps a flash drive. He hoped like hell it wasn't that last option; searching the area was hassle enough already without having his target be about the size of his thumb. He grumbled as he sent out pulse after pulse of electric energy, feeling for the echo of anything out of place.

Spotting a large area of movement below him, Cole glanced down to the street below. Five tanks, all damaged, rolled into Times Square, crushing cars beneath them as they guided a white, truck-like vehicle into an area guarded by Marines and a set of high metal barricades they had set up earlier that day. Something big was going to happen, and Cole intended to get his information and leave before it did.

As he continued his search, he was vaguely aware of the white vehicle being anchored to the street. It was a bad sign, which got even worse when he tried to cross the street to scour the other side of Times Square. He was spotted by a Marine, and told quite sternly to leave the area immediately. He feigned his compliance, climbing up another building the moment he was out of sight. It didn't occur to him until several long minutes later that the white vehicle had tanks on it that had more than a passing resemblance to the ones on the machines that he'd seen spraying Bloodtox into the air earlier that day. However, even after pausing his hunt and looking directly at it, he could not determine where the substance exited the machine. Perhaps it was a bomb? All the more reason to leave before their plan was enacted. 

* * *

"All right," Alex said to no one in particular, walking calmly up to the Bloodtox pump, "Let's see what we can shake loose."

He rapidly pressed a few buttons on the console in front of him, spurring the machine into action, its two pistons forcing the red toxin below the street and into the sewers where the infection had falsely hoped to remain safe. For several moments, nothing happened, and the notion that it wasn't working briefly flashed across Alex's mind. His inner doubts were soon dispelled, though, as a series of tremors shook the street, causing a few nearby Marines to stumble, caught off guard. That was when he heard the shrieks that signaled the approach of a pack of hunters.

_Great…_ thought Cole as the sounds reached his ears as well. From his rooftop vantage point, he could already see their pink forms heading his way. He did his best to pick up the pace of his search without risking accidentally passing it by. If not for his own safety, then for the safety of whatever it was that he was looking for. Images of some beast crushing a cellphone beneath its massive talons flashed again and again in the back of his mind as he leapt across a sidestreet to the next rooftop.

The first of them came moments later, bounding up the side of Cole's building with unnatural ease. It howled once it spotted him, but he didn't let it get any farther than that, felling it with a precision electric strike between its sunken, beady eyes. Draining electricity from an air conditioning unit, he prepared for the advance of the others.

The faint crackling sound of electricity arcing was lost among the screams of the hunters surrounding the Bloodtox pump. Alex had already transformed his arm into a massive blade, choosing to protect the pump at the expense of revealing his location. Fortunately, Blackwatch didn't seem to care at the moment, focusing their fire on the creatures attacking the pump. In fact, they were something of a good help, distracting those hunters that had not yet made it to the pump, thus making his task easier.

Cole, however, was well aware of Mercer's actions below him. The staccato explosions of machine gun fire and the deafening shrieks of perishing hunters rose up to his ears with little resistance, interrupted at regular intervals by the boom of a tank shell going off. At this point, though, it mattered little to him, his mind focusing on keeping himself alive and trying desperately to locate the information. He moved swiftly from rooftop to rooftop, pausing his search only to fry any of the infected beasts that got too close. Though they still attacked him without hesitation, their ultimate goal seemed to be elsewhere, almost certainly the white vehicle anchored in the center of the square.

A bellowing roar reverberated through the streets, followed by three others, virtually identical to the first. Marines shouted, concrete exploded, and the shrieks of two massive red tentacles joined the cacophony. Alex turned his attention to the Leader Hunters charging the pump, while Cole took advantage of a brief lull in the waves of their lesser brethren to observe the situation below. Mercer, though fighting valiantly, was becoming overwhelmed, the majority of the military forces in the area dead save for a few scattered Marines and a pair of helicopters. Something needed to be done…

A bright flash of light out of the corner of his eye caused Alex to look towards one of the hydras that had just appeared. The creature was engulfed in a blinding curtain of lightning, as if the Greek gods had decided to join the fight, hurling thunderbolts. The crackling of electricity, booming of thunder, and pained, dying screams of the hydra temporarily drowned out all the other noises for a few brief instants before the onslaught let up, leaving the exploded husks of several cars and the charred remains of the ex-hydra. Alex looked about for the source of the lightning storm, but found nothing out of the ordinary at first glance, and was pulled back into the fight again as a hunter took advantage of his distraction, slamming him from behind.

Cole stood atop his perch, madly drawing energy from all nearby sources in preparation for his next attack. As far as he could tell, Mercer hadn't spotted him yet, and that was probably for the better... 

* * *

The last of the hunters had fallen, their bodies littering the street around the Bloodtox pump, thankfully still functioning. Alex searched around him, ready for the next wave of infected, growing even more apprehensive every moment they lingered. Something wasn't right, that couldn't have been all of them. His suspicions were confirmed when the asphalt beneath his shoes began to shake violently, nearly knocking him off his feet. Ahead of him, large fractures appeared in the concrete, spiderwebbing outward and forming deep rifts in the ground. Something _big_ was pushing up from the sewers, and moments later its massive, fleshy head erupted from the center of Times Square, rising stories off the ground. Squinting as he examined the new opponent, he spotted the figure of a woman encased within the creature. There was only one person who could be controlling it.

"What the hell is that? Elizabeth? What is she?"

The beast answered his question by letting loose a deafening shriek, shattering windows for several blocks. It shrieked again, and this time a massive shockwave emanated from it, sending cars flying and decimating what little remained of the armed forces in the area. Alex fled at top speed, trying desperately to outrun the blast, eventually succeeding. He turned back to Greene, who was being assaulted by another lightning storm. The immense creature had its attention focused on a nearby rooftop, pummeling it with chunks of rock funneled through its "mouth." Alex used the opportunity to close the distance between the two of them, grabbing and consuming infected along the way...

Trembling slightly from the immense power building up inside of him, he stopped mere feet from the base of the beast and slammed his fists to the ground, feeling as a part of himself tunneled below the asphalt. Biomass spikes erupted from below Greene, shearing through the thick, neck-like structures supporting the creature's head. Another roar was heard, and it collapsed to the ground, utterly helpless for a few key moments. Alex was about to slice into the creature's head, but stopped short as the mysterious force rained lighting down on it again, the deafening boom of thunder filling his ears. Greene howled, and the beast struggled desperately to retract back into the sewers to regenerate. By the time it had succeeded, its outer skin was blackened and charred, ashen flakes falling off it at the slightest breeze. The smoky scent of burned flesh filled the air.

Times Square was still for a few excruciatingly long moments, the only sound a faint gurgling coming from the massive hole in the street. Quickly, Alex used this brief respite to try again to locate the source of the electrical storms, leaping up to the rooftop that had initially held Greene's attention. He wasn't sure what to expect, but found his questions unanswered. The roof was empty save for the typical assortment of air conditioning units and satellite dishes. Whoever, or _whatever_ had been up here, they had probably fled once Greene started attacking them, moving to a safer location. He didn't have time to track them down, though; even now, he could hear the creature reemerging. He leapt down to street level and prepared to unleash another devastating attack on whatever Greene had become… 

* * *

_That was too f--king close…_ Cole thought as he made haste away from the nearly destroyed Times Square, tightly clutching a tiny pager. His worst fear had come true, and had it not been for his ability to sense electronics, he would have likely never found the miniscule device. The appearance of that enormous worm-like creature didn't help things at all. Had that been the head of the infection, its last ditch effort to combat whatever the hell the military was spraying into the air? Now that it was dead, partially by his own hands, would this virus finally start to die off? He hoped so.

He stopped for a moment on the roof of an apartment building and looked down to his small prize. The pager was vibrating and beeping in his hand, and when he looked at its screen, a single address was displayed. Cole committed it to memory, and began heading in that direction. His meeting was still hours away, but he had nothing else to do.

As he walked at street level, he pondered the timing of it all. His informant was obviously connected to the military, and almost certainly knew of the Times Square operation. If so, why did he plant the information in quite possibly the most dangerous place on the island? It was confusing, and had he not actually found the pager, he would have suspected that it had all been a setup to remove him from the picture instead of letting him into whatever conspiracy surrounded Alex Mercer and what had been happening in Manhattan. Though Cole didn't trust his informant much at this point, he still continued towards his meeting, if only to get some sort of explantation. He was ready, though, in case this was yet another trap...


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** SPOILERS! SERIOUS PROTOTYPE SPOILERS! You know, the norm. I just had to write from Cross's position. Firstly, he needs more love, and secondly, this is the last chance I'll get to do so. Yup, Supreme Hunter goes ohm-nom-nom and sparks off an insane number of debates across Prototype forums internet-wide! Hooray ambiguous cutscenes! Speaking of said cutscene, I know this event didn't take place at night. So sue me. It was a style choice. Nothing more dramatic than electrified fighting at night! Gah! Dialogue! The good news is that that lovely piece of exposition should explain some things for those of us who only know of one of the games, though admittedly, Alex's backstory has been tweaked a bit in the fine details to keep with some semblance of science.

Hungry for knowledge… oh, God, Alex.

Cole, you fool! You ran out of electricity!

_

* * *

This is bad news…_

Captain Robert Cross gritted his teeth as the helicopter containing his commander revved its engines and took off into the night sky, passing out of the range of the floodlights illuminating the landing pad. First the man hunting Mercer, now this. Taggart was a dead man…

He quickly glanced down at his watch; still twenty minutes until he would finally meet the man who had managed to find his contact booths. Once, he could chalk up to random chance, perhaps he'd heard rumors. Twice, however, was knowing. He must have been working with Dr. Ragland and obtained a copy of the map Cross had left with the doctor, that was the only possible explanation, though how the two had met in the first place was yet another mystery. Cross had a hunch that the man had followed Mercer to the hospital in an effort to track him down.

That was the sticking point. Even if he had been ignorant before, this man had seen Mercer in action more than once, if not when he was destroying the Bloodtox pumps then most certainly during the incident at Times Square. Why the hell did he think he still had a chance? The possibilities worried him, as much as he hated to admit it. Inwardly, he hoped the man was just overconfident. He would know soon enough, he assured himself. The man would have his questions answered, and in return he might be willing to answer his.

That was, of course, if he had managed to survive the operation in Times Square. It had been a risky gambit, to be sure, but ultimately, if this man was able to survive whatever the head of the infection, Greene, threw at him, there was a good chance he would succeed in tackling Mercer. If not, well… that was one more loose end tied up. The last thing the planet needed was Mercer consuming this man, so confident in whatever abilities he possessed, and gaining them in turn. An almost imperceptible shudder ran down his back when he considered the outcome of such an event.

The sound of a body thudding to the pavement broke his train of thought. Already certain of who it was, Cross turned to face the newcomer, who proceeded to walk into the glow of the floodlights. The pair locked eyes for the first time since Cross had seen the man through his binoculars, and he was in fact wearing the same yellow and black outfit he'd first spotted him in. The man strode forward confidently, but stopped a ways from Cross, obviously still wary of a possible attack.

"You're early," Cross said simply.

"I wanted the element of surprise. You're my contact?"

"That's correct. Let's make this quick; you're not the only one with questions." Cross motioned the other closer, not wanting to say the information he was about to relay in more than a low voice. To his relief, the man cooperated.

"I'll start with the obvious, then: What exactly in Mercer?"

"To the point. The answer to that is a long story, one that Mercer is piecing together himself as we speak, but I'll give you what you need to know. Dr. Alexander J. Mercer was caught trying to smuggle a deadly, mutagenic virus out of Manhattan, codenamed BACKLIGHT. He was shot down, but was able to shatter the container before he died, releasing the virus and causing all this…" He punctuated his statement with a sweeping gesture to the city behind him. "The virus then infected him, consumed him, and used his body to support itself, adding its own DNA to his genome."

"Why, then, don't we have thousands of Mercers running around New York?"

"What happened to him is unbelievably rare. Normally, the virus goes rampant, mutating cells with little purpose or control, and kills the victim within a few days, either directly from cell death or from complications due to the mutations. It acts like a cancer in most beings. However, a tiny fraction of the victims somehow adapt to the virus, what we call a 'runner'. Precisely why or how they're able to adapt, we don't know. Mercer is unique even among them, and we suspect its because he was infected post-mortem through his gunshot wounds."

"How is he different?"

"To date, there have been only four runners, including Mercer. The other three were clinically insane, though capable of tactical decisions, driven only by the drive to infect others and spread the virus further. All three were female, all three were infected with an earlier strain of the virus. Mercer, however, has retained all his mental abilities, and in that respect he is virtually human. He plans, he learns, he uses whatever he can to his advantage. More, though, he is capable of acting independently and forming his own goals. He might even still feel compassion."

"Compassion?" The man was incredulous. He didn't blame him.

"He was spotted rescuing a woman from a hive a few days ago."

"Yes, I saw that… I still don't know what to make of it. Hopefully this means he can still be reasoned with."

Cross nodded in agreement. He'd formed an alliance of sorts with Zeus, but it was likely almost entirely out of necessity. Mercer was hungry for knowledge, to use an unfortunately apt phrase, and he was ready to do whatever it took to get his answers, even if that meant following the orders of a complete stranger.

"His increased intelligence might also be linked to his other unique characteristic; his ability to control his mutations for use both offensively and defensively."

"I've seen. What exactly is he capable of?"

"Mercer is superhumanly strong, resilient both to damage and disease, and is preternaturally agile. He's been clocked running at over fifty miles per hour and can execute complex series of acrobatics almost as if by reflex. Even without using his mutations, he is a master of close-quarters combat. He consumes other organic beings to heal himself and, in the case of humans, gain their memories, skills, and appearance. He's used this to learn how to operate virtually every piece of equipment the military has thrown at him."

To his relief, the man reacted to this information with a curse muttered under his breath, followed by a motion for Cross to continue.

"At range, he's less of a threat, but not much. Besides using firearms, he is able to throw large, heavy objects long distances with great accuracy, as well as extending his arm into a bladed, whip-like --"

"I know," the other said with some exasperation, perhaps frustration. Cross twitched a smile as he realized he wasn't the only one getting the bad news this evening. "Now the real question: is there anything out there that can at least slow him down?"

"Anything short of a hand-grenade just pisses him off. You're going to need high explosive if you want to do any real damage. The only things we've found that will make him think twice, short of a small nuke, are anti-tank shells and high-voltage electricity, something along the lines of this." With that, he pulled out what was, in essence, a cattle prod, but had been modified to produce a _far _larger jolt. The tool had saved his life on more than one occasion; the creatures he fought may have been resistant to pain, but they couldn't ignore 20,000 volts coursing through their decaying nerves, forcing their muscles to lock up.

Much to Cross's surprise, the man's expression brightened noticeably, and a smile crept across his face. So that was his key; he somehow had ready access to electricity.

"Electricity? Are you serious?"

"Yes. Now its my turn to interrogate _you._ Just who are you?"

There was a pause as the man debated how much he should reveal about himself, but Cross waited patiently for his decision.

"My name is Cole MacGrath. Nearly two months ago, I was involved in an accident with an experimental device designed to enhance the user's natural abilities. Itwas activated while I was transporting it, and the explosion destroyed a large portion of the city, killing thousands. I woke up three days later with the power to absorb, store, and release electricity at will… and since then, I've gotten quite good at it." Cole finished this with a wry smile.

_Great, we've got a regular superhero…_ Cross thought, cringing inwardly when he considered the possibility of Zeus coming into contact with whatever machine that had given Cole these abilities. "Is this device still functional?"

As if reading his mind, he answered, "It was destroyed. Don't worry, Mercer won't get a hold of it."

The Captain breathed a reserved sigh of relief before continuing his questioning. "Now why, precisely, are you concerned with him?"

"I've been warned that, at some point in the future, a being of immense destructive power will attempt to destroy the world. You can see why I think it might be Mercer. Even if its not, he's a potential danger. I need to be certain he won't cause trouble, one way or another."

"You're bold, I'll give you that. You're trying to accomplish a task that's nearly impossible for even for beings near his equal."

"Someone has to. If not me, then--"

"Quiet!" He held up his hand to add emphasis to the command, and strained his ears in an effort to confirm what he had feared; the formerly silent landing pad was now awash with the faint moans and gurgles of approaching infected.

"Let's see what you've got, then," he said, simultaneously loading the large grenade launcher he carried on his right arm. The creatures didn't concern him much; he'd been specifically trained to handle such beings, and had in fact gone toe to toe with Mercer himself just a week before. He was more interested in assessing Cole's combat prowess, to see if he did indeed stand a chance against Mercer.

The darkness surrounding the landing pad wasn't absolute, and faintly the pair could see the the horde inching closer, the occasional member breaking away in a sprint only to tumble to the ground moments later from its own lack of coordination. Beside Cross, the harsh white light of the floodlamps dimmed considerably, replaced with the eerie, flickering blue-white glow of arcing electricity as MacGrath drained power from them, temporarily overshadowing the cries of the infected with the explosive crackle of electricity.

The first of the horde began to jerkily climb the chain-link fence that encircled the landing pad just now coming into the glow of the floodlights. Before Cross could take aim, though, a blinding flash of lightning lanced out and electrified the metal fence, frying the intruders with a cascade of sparks and smoke. Those behind the front lines took no heed, and scrambled over their fallen brothers to take their place, only to join them as they, too, fell for the same trap. As more and more bodies piled up, Cole kept channeling electricity into the fence, upholding the deadly barrier with seemingly no effort on his part. Despite this, Cross wasn't willing to relax just yet; over the sounds of Cole's efforts, he distantly heard the echoing bellows that heralded the approach of hunters.

What confidence he had that he could just leave the fighting to Cole was shattered as a massive, pink blur launched itself over their heads and landed behind them with a solid thud of cracking concrete. Both men whirled around and were met with the sight of an enormous bipedal beast, unlike anything either had seen before. It towered over them, possibly 10 feet tall, perched on a pair of heavily muscled legs, with one limb sharpened into an organic blade and the other ending in a clawed, deformed excuse for a hand. The creature uttered a gurgling growl, baring its misshapen, uneven teeth in an expression of animalistic fury. Its one clear eye focused intently on the pair, while the other stared straight ahead, a cloudy white bulge that could have been nothing more than another of the multitude of tumors covering its body. Hoping like hell that Cole would continue to hold the line against the lowly infected, Cross took aim at the abomination and fired.

The creature howled fiercely as round after explosive round hit home, forcing it to stumble back several feet in an attempt to keep its balance. Ultimately, though, Cross's assault seemed to be no more than a mere annoyance to the beast, and the moment the Captain was forced to reload, it lunged forward, swinging its bladed arm low in an attempt to decapitate the kneeling Cross. At the last moment, the man rolled forward, diving between its legs, ready to pelt it again with grenades. The creature's momentum continued to carry it forward towards the fence, allowing Cole to take advantage of a brief lull in the waves of infected. In his peripheral vision, Cross watched as MacGrath gathered his energy, then released a powerful shockwave at the disoriented creature, which, combined with the Captain's grenades, sent it stumbling headlong into the still electrified fence. The beast writhed and twitched as the current coursed through its body, an ear-shattering shriek bubbling up from its throat as it struggled to regain control of its muscles and break free. There was the creaking of metal, and a portion of the fence was torn away and hurled at Cole. He rolled to the side, easily avoiding it, then shouted for the Captain to watch the newly created gap in the electrified barrier while he dealt with the beast. Acknowledging him with a terse reply, he maneuvered himself close enough to the fence to occasionally touch it with his electric prod, still in his off hand from when he had displayed it earlier. It wasn't as powerful or efficient as Cole could manage, but it would have to suffice.

The Captain focused his attention on the ragged hole in the fence, ready to fire on any infected that managed to find its way through without getting caught on the sharp edges of the tear. Behind him, he could hear the conflict between the creature and Cole, punctuated at almost regular intervals by a dimming of the floodlights as MacGrath replenished his stores of power. He resisted the urge to look back, knowing that if the horde managed to get past the fence they would be overrun. He simply couldn't risk letting even a few get past him; the creature was more than enough trouble on its own, without having the infected rushing them as well. Fortunately for his ammunition reserves, the vast majority of the infected seemed content to attempt to climb the fence and electrocute themselves rather than enter through the gap.

Another set of bellowing howls reached Cross's ears, these far closer than the last. Within moments, several hunters, their skin shining in the flickering light, landed outside the fence, crushing several of their humanoid brethren beneath their taloned feet. With a grunt, Cross pulled away from the fence and stood in the gap, still tapping his prod against the metal, and fired a rapid volley of grenades at the nearest gorilla-like beast. It fell with a shriek, but the other eight were fast approaching, cutting through the horde with bounding strides, undeterred by the quick death of their comrade. The Captain managed to kill two more before the pack was upon him and he was forced to retreat back within the fence. The remaining six leapt over the electrified barrier with unnatural ease, crashing to the asphalt between him and Cole, still trying to down the giant. Shouting at his temporary partner to warn him, Cross reloaded once again as two of the hunters broke away from the pack and prepared to lunge at him. The Captain killed them easily, but now was deeply worried about his remaining ammunition, the carton carrying the explosive rounds growing lighter and lighter with each reload.

The four hunters began to circle MacGrath, stepping between him and the now wounded giant, as if protecting it. Cross was ready to pick off the one closest to him when he was pummeled from behind by a cluster of flailing arms, knocking him forward and throwing off his aim. He turned to the infected that had snuck through the gap and began ruthlessly beating them back with equal ferocity, cracking bone with a well-aimed strike from his arm-mounted grenade launcher. Their ranks had finally begun to thin, the first piece of good news all day, but there were still a sizable amount beyond the fence. His lips curled into a grimacing snarl as he continued fighting back the horde, desperate to conserve precious ammunition.

Turning an already bad day worse, the floodlights blinked out completely, no doubt because Cole had finally drained their generators dry, leaving Cross struggling to adapt to the darkness. He didn't have to wait long, though; there was a massive explosion, like the sound of thunder and for several moments, the area was bathed in dazzling blue-white light, surpassing even that of the floodlamps, the sounds of the infected completely drowned out by the explosive cracks of lighting bolt after lightning bolt striking the airfield, sending tiny chunks of concrete flying with each impact. The Captain risked a glance behind him, but was blinded by the display, catching only glimpses of the dead hunters behind the brilliant light show before he had to return his attention to what was left of the advancing horde.

After several long moments, the electrical storm ceased, once again plunging the area back into darkness. The airfield was silent once again as Cross finished beating down the last of the infected foolish enough to try to push through the breach, until a single phrase was uttered that terrified the Captain more than any beastly howl ever could.

"Oh, shit…"

Cross immediately turned around, no longer concerned with the fence, and found Cole in full retreat of the infected giant, rolling forward as a large piece of concrete hit the ground where he had been just moments before. Taking advantage of the fact that the abomination was still focused on MacGrath, Cross fired off the last of his grenades, lighting up the murk with their explosions and making the beast's already repulsive form appear downright ghastly as it was lit from below. Its growls were conciderably weaker than before, but it was obvious that this attack was just as ineffective as before.

The giant howled, arching its back, not in the throes of death, but preparing to slam the ground. The Captain, experienced with dealing with similar creatures, saw what was coming and shouted for MacGrath to run, to get off the ground if he could while he attempted to do the same. It was of little use, though. Uninterrupted by the constant rain of electricity and explosives, the beast slammed the ground with both arms, throwing both men off balance as the concrete beneath their feet lurched and shook. Cole completely lost his footing and fell to the asphalt, only to be impaled moments later as a small cluster of thick, black spikes erupted beneath him, sent under the ground by the beast.

Cross didn't have time to mourn the man as the abomination turned its attention back to him. He grappled bravely with the beast, using his electrified prod whenever he found an opening, but ultimately, even he, Captain Robert Cross, who had fought the infection for years in outbreaks and containment leaks across the country, had killed a runner single-handedly, had managed not only to survive a confrontation with the infamous Alex Mercer, but incapacitate him as well, fell to the creature's blows.

As he lay on the pavement in his dying moments, the all to familiar screaming pain of broken bones coursing through his body, he could feel a rapidly advancing, burning sensation that could only mean the abomination was now consuming him to heal itself, to use and convert his cells to replace the ones that had been damaged in the fight. Even now, he couldn't help but be amazed at the sheer power of the virus, how unbelievably skilled it was at not only surviving, but _thriving_. Even now, as he prepared to finally and begrudgingly admit defeat to the enemy he'd been fighting for… how long had it been? He couldn't remember. Too long. And yet, somehow, over all those years, what had once been his bitter enemy was now, in another form, his ally as well, not just in Zeus, no, but in the Supersoldiers, the D-Codes, who had been infected with a new, milder strain and taught to fight that from which their powers stemmed. It was poetic, in a way, but the Captain had little time to dwell on it as the tendrils of the creature began to absorb his brain, cutting off his train of thought permanently.

Only echoes remained after that. 

* * *

Cole did his best to stifle his groans of pain as he clutched the gaping wound in his side, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood that now stained his hands and his jacket, punctured both on the front and back from the spike that had been driven through his body. Several smaller wounds dotted his back, side, and right thigh, where the other spikes had pierced or scraped his skin. After several excruciating moments of listening to the fight continue around him, he slowly turned his head to where his contact had finally fallen. The beast was standing over him, several black-red ropy tentacles protruding from its stomach and latching onto his prone form, rapidly spreading a mat of like-colored tendrils across his skin. The man made no move to resist, and Cole assumed he was either dead or dying.

As painful as it was, Cole forced himself upright, then onto his feet. His footing was unsure, and he was already weak from blood loss, but he knew that this was going to be his only chance to get away alive, while the creature was distracted doing whatever it was doing to his informant's corpse. Moving as quickly as he could manage, he hobbled to the rip in the fence, thankful that the horde seemed to be elsewhere at the moment. As he stumbled past the cars that littered the street, he drained what little electricity he could from their batteries, his vision clearing and the pain fading perceptibly each time. The wounds were still grievous, though, and he would need to get to a hospital as soon as he could.

He knew precisely which one to head to...


	8. Chapter 8

Holy Crap, I'm back.  
I won't give you a list of excuses, just know that I'll be more active again now that school's out.  
Hooray, I've now written from the point of view of every one of Alex's allies... except Karen Parker. I don't much care for her (though not as much as some people around here) and I figure she's already dead at this point, the crap scared out of her and dumped into a mass of infected only to be shot by a Blackwatch trooper in the opening cutscene. Thank you, DutchessJadawin, I have seen the light!  
For those interested, the dialogue between McMullen and Mercer and between Cross (sorta) and Mercer are directly from in-game.  
And I can already see the opening to Chapter 9.  
From the looks of it, only two or three chapters left.

* * *

It was early morning when Cole finally stumbled into the entrance of Dr. Ragland's morgue. The morning chill blew in behind him as he opened the door, adding to the coolness that lay within. Still bleeding slightly from the large wound on his side, he coughed loudly to announce his presence, but regretted it as the action made the pain flare up once again. He groaned slightly, then let out a few questioning hello's. When no one came to investigate the newcomer, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Glancing quickly across the shelves, he located a roll of sterile cloth bandages. They wouldn't help much, but it was all he knew how to use without potentially making things even worse.

"You again?" the doctor asked, walking into the room. Then, a pause as he realized what the man was doing. "What happened?"

Cole looked up from his work as Ragland approached. "That map you gave me? It was for the locations of hidden contact locations, intended for Mercer. I met with the informant last night, but he was killed when the zombies attacked us."

"They're not zombies, th--"

"Infected, I know. Doesn't stop them from looking and acting like them, though." Cole winced as the doctor began to unwrap the bandages.

"This might need surgery… You're lucky to be alive, much less as lucid as you are. You _walked_ here?" he asked, incredulous as he continued to examine the punctures. To his amazement, they had already begun to heal, and to his trained eye looked to be several days old, which was impossible given their severity. The man would have most certainly died without medical attention, of which he could see no signs.

"More like 'staggered', but yes, I did."

Ragland couldn't piece it together, and had he not seen first hand the even more rapid healing abilities granted by BLACKLIGHT infection, he wouldn't have believed that this had indeed happened just hours ago. That thought brought on an uncomfortable question: was this man now infected himself?

"Is this normal for you?" he asked.

"Is what normal?"

"The fact that your wounds are already starting to heal."

"Yes," Cole answered simply, refusing to give any further detail than that.

* * *

Unconsciousness was a bizarre sensation for Alex Mercer. Not even the near-impenetrable haze that surrounded the events and memories of Dr. Alexander J. Mercer compared to the sheer nothingness that he now reflected on, laying still on the examining table in what was presumably a lab of some sort. He rested at night, yes, though for no true reason other than a desperate attempt to at least appear vaguely human; even running for hours on end never fatigued him. Still, even during that somewhat torpid state, he was aware of his surroundings, of the passage of time. Only his near-death at the hands of a massive surge of Bloodtox had managed to interrupt that constant stream of memories, no matter how vague.

He remained still, his eyes closed, barely breathing, mulling these ideas over as he waited for the nearly imperceptible sound that signaled the opportunity to make his move. He didn't know the exact layout of the adjoining room, where his target now sat in a wheeled office chair, tapping his fingers on the desk in front of him, if Mercer wasn't just imagining those tiny sounds filtering through the wall in the otherwise absolute silence, but the memories of all those he had consumed pointed to a likely setup; security camera feed on the near wall, workstation to the right of that, door to the holding area on the left, door back out into the main facility behind, again on the left. As he listened now, he heard the creak as the chair's occupant shifted, then turned and rolled to the workstation.

_Now..._

Moving quickly and silently, Alex rolled off the slab, darting to the door and out of sight of the single camera watching over the area. His target must have seen his movement out of the corner of his eye, as Alex heard the sound of a gasp and a gun cocking in the next room. With a smooth motion, he stepped through the door and locked eyes with Dr. Raymond McMullen. The latter was terrified, and rightly so; being the leader of Gentek made him the one man who knew more about this conspiracy than any one else, and _that_ made him a prime target for consumption.

"Hi, boss," Alex said with a smirk, taking a few easy steps forward and putting McMullen's only escape route behind him. The scientist stumbled backward, falling out of his chair.

"That is a very foolish thing to do," he continued, referring to the pistol now pointed in his direction. Even if the weapon had been a threat in the first place, its aim was thrown off by the owner's badly trembling hand, rendering it about as dangerous as the office chair that now lay between them. McMullen began to sputter, unable to get out a coherent word, which only caused Mercer's anger to rise.

"You know who I am," he stated, now raising his voice and continuing to advance, sending the scientist cowering backward to the far wall, trapped. "And you know what I do."

The man sitting across from him sighed, finally composing himself, as if the knowledge that he wasn't going to make it out of this room alive was strangely calming him. McMullen raised his head, once again looking Mercer in the eye. After a brief pause as he weighed his options, Mercer's patience wearing thin, he began speaking to his temporary captor and likely murderer, perhaps in an effort to extend these last few moments he had alive.

"You always were so smart… You were ready to give up all our secrets."

"So you infected me."

"No! No… Are you insane? But you were always a lateral thinker; plans within plans… Alex Mercer died. He died trying to release the most deadly virus in history on the people of New York. You died in Penn Station, but the virus found its way into your bloodstream… And here you are, filling in the blanks. We were trying to figure it out, you just wanted to bring it all down… But this isn't what you came here for, is it? You want to know what happened at Hope, Idaho."

At these words, Alex refocused his attention on McMullen. It was the truth; what exactly had transpired in that far off town over forty years ago was quite possibly the single piece of information he sought the most. It was the key, the root of everything that had happened these last two weeks.

"You want… the truth. I know the secret." McMullen said these last words slowly, deliberately. Something was amiss.

"Listen, there's nothing else you can do to hurt me."

Faster than Mercer could cross the distance between them, the doctor placed the pistol beside his head, and fired…

* * *

By midday, Cole was laying in a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling in a half-trance of boredom. The pain of his injuries was nearly gone, but Dr. Ragland was convinced he should remain under his watch until tomorrow at least. These sorts of wounds kept most men hospitalized for weeks, if not months if his kidney had been caught on one of the spikes. Fortunately, it hadn't, and, Cole knew, he would be back in fighting form by the end of the day, especially if he could keep draining power from the nearby heart monitor without setting off any alarms. So far, he'd managed, but the temptation to simply suck its circuits dry didn't help.

The door beside him opened, and, instead of Ragland, as he had expected, Dana stood in the entryway. He turned his head to face her, and sat up in the bed, slightly surprised that she was still at the hospital. She smiled at him, just as they had when they'd first met, and asked him how he was feeling.

"Better. Not great, but better. I'll live, though. I've been through worse," he qualified this last statement with a wry smile.

Dana sat down on another bed beside him, and they began to talk. She was concerned for him, yes, but she was also intensely curious about what had attacked him. He described the creature in detail, but left out most of the information on the confrontation, including why he had stayed and fought the beast instead of running like any sane man would have. He was sorely tempted to tell her more, and he suspected she was starting to piece things together, but he kept silent about his mission and his abilities for the moment.

Dana, however, already knew a few things. "I overheard Ragland talking this morning," she started, but left the sentence hanging, waiting for Cole to answer.

"I'm not infected, if that's what you're wondering," he replied, his tone soft and understanding. A long silence between them followed, broken first by Dana.

"I'm asking because… well, you seem to be able to take care of yourself out there, at least most of the time. I was helping my brother get to the bottom of this damned infection business, but I haven't seen him in days, not since the… the hunter grabbed me." Her normally willful, independent manor seemed to melt a little at the memory, but it was brief.

"You're worried something might have happened to him?"

"Maybe. All I know is that there's something wrong. Have you run into anyone who's also trying to figure this thing out?"

"Just the informant who was with me last night. He seemed to know a lot more than someone searching for answers. He was definitely an insider."

"What did he look like?"

"Tall, late-middle aged, black hair--"

"It wasn't him," she said saddened that there was still no sign of her brother, but relieved that the casualty last night hadn't been him.

A small silence intervened, then Dana continued, "Well, if you head back out there, be on the look out."

"I will," Cole replied. He was about to ask her exactly what her brother looked like, hell, even his name would have been helpful, but Ragland entered at just that moment. The doctor asked Dana to leave the room for a moment so he could check Cole over and make sure he was healing properly. She obliged, and soon Cole was alone in the room with the doctor, his yellow and black jacket laying beside him as Ragland unwrapped the bandages and quickly checked his wounds. Cole, no medical expert, could already see that the only thing left by tomorrow would be a small scar where the largest spike had punched through his abdomen, and even that would fade with time. Say what you would about his newfound powers, but he was thankful for his healing abilities.

"I still don't believe it, but from the looks of it, I'll be able to let you go tomorrow," Ragland told him as he rewrapped the bandages around Cole's torso.

"Listen, Dr. Ragland," Cole suddenly interjected, in a questioning tone.

"What?"

"Dana, she says her brother is out there, asked me to look for him. She didn't say a word about what he looked like or even what his name was, though. Do you happen to know anything?"

"Not a thing. Mercer brought her in, but he didn't tell me anything about her. I could guess all day about their relationship, but I have very little to go on. I don't even know her last name."

Cole felt the doctor wasn't telling him everything, but didn't voice it. He himself had been anything but open since he'd arrived here…

* * *

Alex slowly approached the otherwise ordinary phone booth, ready to grab the cell phone he knew would be secured beneath. He barely paid attention to his surroundings: the red glow of sunset, the ripples in the water just past the phone booth and the fence it rested against, the dull sounds of the city behind him. He did notice, however, the large aircraft carrier floating stationary in the vast stretch of water. It had been present there for as long as he could remember, which wasn't saying much, as his memory stretched back only two weeks. Two weeks exactly, today.

_Huh… Happy Birthday, then,_ he thought to himself as he stood next to the phone booth and slid his hand beneath the box. He had just touched the hidden phone when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"I thought it was time we talked," the gruff voice of Captain Cross stated.

At his words, Alex whirled around, ready for another fight with the Specialist. It had been a trap, just another trap! He was through being duped by people he thought he trusted; first Karen, now his informant? He had had it, and was about to take his frustrations out on the Captain. Snarling, he tensed his muscles and balled his hands into fists, preparing to lunge at his adversary.

Cross, however, merely held up a hand to stop him. "You don't want to do that," he said, and to prove his point, he pulled another cellphone out of his pocket. He pressed a button, and with an almost imperceptible delay, the hidden phone began to chirp and beep.

"I've done you job for you," Mercer started, realizing that his informant had been his old enemy all along. "I've broken the back of the Infection."

All this time, it had just been Cross, manipulating him. Send him to the "secret" meeting to test Bloodtox and the new Supersoldiers. Give him the locations of some Bloodtox pumps to throw off both his suspicions and anyone else's. Send him to Times Square to deal with Greene, kill her off so that the military could finally gain the upper hand in this war. Give him a plan to get to his prime target, the Director of Gentek to either have the man consumed or killed. Either way, he was no longer a liability. And if Alex himself had died along the way, however unlikely, well, that was just one less mutant for Blackwatch to deal with.

"Pretty soon, this whole place will be glass," Cross told him, sweeping his arm wide to indicate the entirety of Manhattan Island, perhaps more.

"Even Randall's not crazy enough to nuke Manhattan," Alex replied, referring to the head of Blackwatch, who even now was forming battle plans, giving orders, and reviewing reports in his office onboard the very aircraft carrier behind them.

"You're wrong." Cross's voice had grown grim at these words. "He was at Hope, in '69. He'll do anything to stop the Infection. You help me stop him, you get your secrets."

So he was still dangling the answers he was looking for in front of him. He didn't like it, but ultimately he was still deeply determined to solve the mystery surrounding Gentek and the BLACKLIGHT virus. Surrounding _himself_, he inwardly admitted, though he still hated thinking of himself as just another avatar of the virus.

"There's no way to get to that ship without being blown out of the sky," Alex pointed out with an air of mocking surprise. Knowing Cross, it was unlikely that he didn't have a plan to get around the quarantine, though, and he waited for his inevitable response.

"I have a way," the Captain began, outlining what he wanted Mercer to do. "Randall wants a Colonel named Taggart. He sent me to find him. He's our key onto the _Reagan_. Taggat's massing a large force of helicopters at these locations." With this, he handed him a small map with several areas circled in red ink. "If we don't move now, he'll muscle his way out of Manhattan in a fleet of helicopters, and Randall might not be able to stop him. Mercer, take out the helicopters. I'll try to pin down Taggart's location. Don't let any of them get out of the city; Taggart could be on any one of them."

"Why does it seem like I'm getting the short end of this deal?" he asked, but Cross offered no response, simply leaving him to carry out his mission.

Once he was out of sight, Mercer sighed and studied the map he'd been handed. Once again, he was playing the part of the hired muscle, only this time, he wasn't killing for his own survival, or to uncover the answers he was looking for. All the men in those helicopters would die because one man tried to flee Manhattan, probably further cementing Randall's conviction that the only way to stop the Infection was to completely destroy the city. It was thoughtless slaughter. All they were doing was trying to leave, something he himself very much wanted to do. It wasn't right, and even now, he could feel his anger rising at the coming bloodbath.

* * *

The sun had begun to set outside the window of the small room in the hospital. Cole was still confined to bed, despite his protests. He could tell, though, that something was going on outside, something big. The howls of the infected had subtly died down, but the area was no quieter. The thumping of helicopter engines had permeated the late afternoon, with barely a minute passing without another flying overhead. Dana was sitting with him on the other bed, busy on her laptop, but every so often worriedly peeked out the window to try and catch a glimpse of what was going on.

Despite the noise, though, the afternoon had been generally uneventful. He and Dana had chatted for a while, exchanging a little more about themselves. She was a journalist, and had been using her computer in an attempt to piece together what was going on. In fact, she had a rough draft of an article she planned to publish already typed up. He told her that he was a bicycle courier, which hadn't exactly been a lie; it was what he'd been doing before one exploding package had changed his life forever. He said that he was concerned about what was happening, that there was someone he was trying to find among the chaos.

Once again, he found himself regretting every step he took towards furthering their friendship. He was going to leave back to Empire City once this thing had cleared up, and he found it unlikely that she would drop everything to be with him, not after just a few days of knowing each other. Worse, it would be difficult for him to visit her. As it was, it took him three days to get from Empire City to New York, then another three back. That was at the very least a six-day round trip, not counting the time he spent in New York. It was simply unacceptable, given his duty to protect his hometown. Finally, long distance relationships never really worked out, at least not in his experience. With every word he exchanged with her, he knew he was digging himself deeper and deeper into an emotional hole.

Besides, this was why Trish had been killed. Kessler had been convinced that Cole needed to separate himself from emotional attachments in order to confront The Beast directly once it appeared, instead of running, trying to protect his family as he had. Did he really mean to completely disregard his future self's warning, no matter how cruelly it had been taught to him? He didn't know, and like a fool, he kept talking with her, bonding with her more every minute.

His train of thought was broken when the near-steady thrum of helicopter engines suddenly was replaced by the sounds of battle above them…

* * *

Dana had started to talk to Cole again, bored and frustrated with her search for more information. All her leads had dried up, and now all she could really do was wait for Alex to tell her something. Funny, in the beginning, she had been _his_ insider, tracking down people connected to him and Gentek.

She worried about him. She had vague memories of him following the massive creature that had captured her, but they were fogged because its erratic, violent path had occasionally made her lose consciousness along the way, only to reawaken moments later hoping like hell this was some vivid nightmare. From there, only her waking up in Ragland's morgue, confused. She had learned that not even he had seen Alex since he had dropped her off that day… four days ago, if she was right. He'd visited her practically twice a day before the incident, why had he suddenly chosen to completely avoid the two of them?

Was it because of Cole? He had said he was looking for someone, and she had a feeling it was her brother. Now that he'd visited the hospital three times now, was Alex deliberately avoiding the place? Or had something worse happened? Had he been captured? Killed? Ragland had said that he'd given him a map of contact locations for some informant, the same one Cole had met with. Maybe it had been a trap? She didn't know, and had no way of knowing until her older brother waltzed up to the door.

Was he even her brother anymore? Whatever had happened to him, it had changed him, both for the better and the worse. He was concerned about her now, something that ran counter to the five years they'd gone without contact previously, even the time they'd spent together after he'd talked to her again and asked her to help him uncover some of Gentek's secrets. Back then, he'd practically treated her like a tool, a means to an end. After he'd lost his memory, he still asked her to do research, yes, but his entire attitude had changed, as if he now saw her as the lone piece of wreckage he had to cling to after his boat had suddenly been sunk from underneath him. Once he'd started to make his own headway, regain his footing, he had still kept in contact with her, instead of simply leaving her as he would have even a month ago. But now, she felt abandoned, and wondered if he had regained enough of his memories to become his old self. It depressed her, and she did her best not to conceder the possibility, for now.

On the other end of the spectrum, Alex scared her now. He was a virtually unstoppable killing machine, focused on nothing more than getting revenge on those that had made him that way and finding out why. She'd only witnessed his abilities firsthand on two occasions, and that was more than enough to terrify her. The first incident was when she'd been cornered by Blackwatch in her apartment. She had been struggling with them when Alex had burst into the room, the first time she'd seen him since he was reported missing, later dead. He'd almost immediately attacked the trooper, killing him with a punch powerful enough to send his fist clean through his torso, through not one, but two layers of bone, not to mention the muscles and organs between. The thought even now made her feel nauseous, and she'd had a front-row seat when it had occurred. Like any other sane person, she'd wanted to run, in shock not only from her attempted capture, but from her brother's reappearance and newfound destructive power. He'd managed to calm her down and get her somewhere safe to explain what was going on, but even he didn't know much at the time. From what she could tell, he hadn't even been conscious for a full day yet.

Beyond that, and the fragments she'd glimpsed while she had been taken by the Hunter, Alex had done his best not to so much as mention his powers in her presence, perhaps not wanting a repeat of their first meeting. The only other thing that even vaguely pointed to his altered state was the loud thump on the roof of her hideout that always announced that he had arrived. For the longest time, she hadn't been sure how he was managing to fall far enough to create such a noise, but following her experience of him chasing after her captor, plus the news reports of broken windowpanes on high-rise skyscrapers around the city, she guessed that he was somehow strong enough to propel himself straight up the side of a building, as impossible as it sounded.

Then there was the fact that he'd practically admitted to eating people to gain their memories and skills, like flying a helico--

Her train of thought was interrupted as the sound of gunfire replaced that of helicopter engines above the hospital. Cole practically leapt up to investigate, pulling back the shutters on the window to reveal the scene outside. Even as he was opening them, the flaming fuselage of an attack helicopter plummeted to the ground in the near distance, followed by the sounds of another crashing nearby. The chopper responsible for the carnage flew off over the skyscrapers on the horizon, already locked onto another target. Only one thought came to mind:

_Alex…_

Hopefully Cole didn't see the recognition on her face… she'd certainly seen his.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: **Yes, you heard right, this is the one with the epic battle you've all been waiting for. No whining about the outcome, please? :)

* * *

"TAAAAGGAAAARRRRRRT! You suicidal MORON!"

The ragged, gravely cry echoed through the streets of Manhattan, the pure, unconstrained rage behind it sending most who heard it cowering in fear. The city's residential mass murderer was on the hunt again, and he was _not_ happy with his target. That man was now fleeing as best as he could towards the nearest bridge back to the mainland, escorted by numerous tanks and his path, hopefully, secured by legions of troops and the enhanced brutes they colloquially called Supersoldiers. With an insane amount of luck, he half-assured himself, he just might make it out alive. Why precisely Zeus wanted him was beyond Taggart, and ultimately, he didn't care. The creature couldn't be reasoned with.

Cole watched from the hospital grounds as the convoy of tanks rumbled by, the one they were protecting counterintuitively the most heavily armored of the group. Dana had been out here with him earlier, after the rogue helicopter had passed, but he had told her to stay inside. She had obliged without argument, perhaps aware of the soldiers lining up along the nearby rooftops.

The last of the tanks passed him, and even before the shouts of their pursuer reached him, he already had a good idea exactly who they were running from. Mercer's enraged yells had only confirmed his suspicions. Seconds after that, the mutant in question darted past him, brutally elbowing cars and pedestrians out of his way with a species of single-minded determinedness that Cole thought only reachable by those on the very brink of sanity. It wasn't a good sign.

Taking himself up on his resolution to act quickly and decisively the next time he saw Mercer, Cole drained electricity from the street lamps around him, the energized crackle and buzz of the action sending nearby pedestrians fleeing. Mercer had already rounded a corner, putting him out of his line of sight, but Cole wasn't letting him go that easily. Taking the shortest path, he cut through the hospital's courtyard, following the sound of the tanks. As he ran down the sidewalk in pursuit, he noticed that troops populated the skyline, among them the heavily muscled Supersoldiers. They were somewhat scattered, but they formed a definite path leading down towards a bridge in the distance.

_So, this "Taggart" person was trying to escape-_

"NOTHING WILL PROTECT YOU FROM ME!" Mercer's shouts cut through his thoughts.

_-and that made Mercer royally pissed, why? One less-_

"NOT MEN! NOT WEAPONS!"

_-platoon of soldiers to deal with, right?_

"NOT ARMOR!"

_God, this guy sounds like a badly translated movie…_

Following the line of military personnel, Cole managed to reach the foot of the bridge long before the tanks, who had likely stopped at the heavily fortified intersection he'd passed several blocks ago. Now, he could see them trundling his way, plowing through masses of Infected without a single worry other than the infuriated monster hot on their trail. Speaking of whom, he was nowhere to be seen, and even his bellows had faded away for the moment. Had he given up on his quarry so easily? It seemed impossible, and even as the tanks grew ever closer, Cole kept expecting Mercer to leap out of nowhere and try to take the convoy by surprise.

Then, with a suddenness that startled even Cole, Mercer vaulted over a nearby building and landed square on the central tank, completely unconcerned with the other four surrounding it. The center vehicle tried to speed away through a gap in its escorts, but he held on tenaciously to the gun barrel even as it was swung as violently as possible left and right. Finding his stability, he climbed up to the hatch on the top of the turret, pried it open, and dropped down inside. Cole watched, horrified, as a uniformed officer, likely Taggart, struggled valiantly to clamber his way out of the now breached hatch. He was about to swing one leg over the side when he was suddenly jerked back down into the tank, his cries turning to screams as he was torn apart by the mutant inside, then… nothing.

Moments later, the armored tank suddenly turned its sights on its former allies. With a single explosive shell, it demolished the two that had taken up position behind it. The massive explosion shook the building Cole had taken cover behind, as well as raising the air temperature around him by several degrees. Moments later, another deafening round was fired, causing Cole to wince and groan in pain as his eardrums were assaulted even through the makeshift earplugs he'd formed out of his fingers. The shockwave from each explosion forced the air out of his lungs and caused his heart to nearly skip a beat. Finally, though, after a final shot, the tank grew quiet once again, and Cole glanced around the corner to see if his own target had left the vehicle yet.

* * *

Alex briefly surveyed the area through the Thermobaric Tank's scope, and, finding no further Blackwatch forces, slowly climbed out of the vehicle through the ruined top hatch. His anger was still boiling, but now, as he was sorting through the memories he'd gained from Taggart, it finally, _finally_ started to fade away. He didn't necessarily dislike it when he got that enraged, but he was sometimes worried about what he might do if he completely lost all semblance of control. The sheer amount of power he now possessed, deep down, almost frightened him. He could, if he was so inclined, completely depopulate the entire country given a few months. He was a walking apocalypse, death on two legs, capable of surviving things that would instantly kill all other life… save a nuke, _maybe._ He wasn't too eager to test that out.

As his abilities grew, or perhaps he simply became more adept at using them, he had ever so slowly become more and more convinced that he was too much of a threat to be left alive. He was a virus, possibly infectious, whose most primal instinct was to kill and consume every organic being he touched. Remorse had only come after the fact, and his capabilities for restraint were, for the most part, relatively untested. The majority of his life so far had been nothing more but a wild frenzy of destruction and slaughter, fueled by his opposition of the Infection, his conflict with the military, and, overall, his desire for the truth. Would he be able to act with some semblance of normalcy once this was over? He might, if he was able to control his murderous impulses, if he was able to subsist on something other than living beings, if he was able to somehow accomplish the monumental task of evading Blackwatch for the rest of his life, which, for all he knew, could be for centuries. The key, though, was whether he willing to risk not being able to.

He almost wished to go back to when he'd first awoken over two weeks ago, when everything had been simpler, when his single-minded determination hadn't yet been undermined by his growing doubts about his future. His sole concerns back then had been to uncover his identity and try to figure out what was going on, both with the city and with himself. Back then, there had been no "what will happen next?", that infuriating question that could only be answered by _waiting_, but only a constantly changing, half-formed plan to somehow get the information he needed and protect those he cared for.

He had no further time to muse over his eventual fate, though. The moment his shoes touched the paved road beneath him, he was suddenly hit full-force by a large electric bolt, connecting with him, then arcing to the metal body of the tank behind him, frying its electronics and rendering it virtually useless. He let out an involuntary grunt of pain as the electricity passed through him, locking up his muscles and causing him to nearly lose his balance. Even as the sensation faded and he began to regain control, he was hit by another blast of energy, then another, in rapid succession, finally forcing him to fall, spasming, to the ground. He immediately thought back to his confrontation with Greene, how she had suddenly been assaulted by similar electrical attacks. Now the source of them was walking toward him, striding almost casually forward, one arm outstretched and crackling with energy. He was wearing a worn, dust-covered, yellow and black jacket, with a single-strap backpack slung over one shoulder. Everything about him looked a man who had just gone through hell and back following his prey, and Alex's sharp eyes picked out the beads of sweat that dotted his close-shaven forehead.

"Alex Mercer," the man said, halting his advance several feet from Alex's prone form. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this…"

The fact that the man had left him alive, instead of raining destruction down on him, like he had Greene, didn't register for Alex. All he knew was that he'd just been sucker punched, and he was not going to let that happen again.

Before his enemy could react, Alex sprung forward, using his increased strength to both push himself off the ground and into his foe in a flying tackle. Normally, at this point, he would have begun pummeling him with his fists, and it would all be over in a matter of seconds. However, he was suddenly assaulted by another blast of electricity, channeled painfully through his skin and clothing. The smell of burnt flesh and… something else filled the air, and the man managed to wriggle free while Alex was temporarily paralyzed. He was saying something, but Alex wasn't listening, and, enraged once again, he grabbed the nearest object he could find, a postal box. He easily tore it from its weakly bolted foundation and flung it at his attacker, only to have it batted just as easily aside by a shockwave he generated.

On the verge of shouting in frustration, Alex willed his right arm to transform into a long, bladed whip. The feeling of his digits being replaced by near-metallic claws, of his skin becoming a wiry, exoskeletal mass was no longer as bizarre as it had once been, and a far cry from what others thought it felt like. It was all still _him_ after all, and the sensations it picked up were the same as the rest of his skin, if subtly deadened. He moved, and the virus obeyed. Never once had he had to think how to swing a massive blade, crush tanks beneath his fists, or shred through flesh. The translation of the new appendages into something his mind could comprehend, and better, feel familiar with, was just another sign that Alex and BLACKLIGHT were intertwined, if not one and the same.

The man obviously had seen Alex at work before, and immediately upon seeing the red-black tendrils uncover his new arm, dashed to get out of Alex's line of sight. He quickly turned a corner into an alleyway, Mercer in hot pursuit, catching a glimpse of his yellow and black outfit for a brief instant before he was hidden by another building. Alex rounded the corner moments later, but the man was nowhere to be found, the alley terminating in a trash-ridden dead end not far ahead. Undeterred, Alex looked in the only direction he could have possibly gone: up.

The man had grabbed hold of a rusted fire escape and was now climbing expertly along its outer surface it in an attempt to reach higher ground. Alex struck out, his arm extending and easily crossing the distance between them, but the man dodged at the last moment, sending the clawed tip slamming into metal instead of flesh. The fire escape groaned under the weight of the man, and after another strike from Alex, it tore away from the building in a shower of brick fragments and rust flakes. The man clung to the tilting structure for only a bare moment before leaping off to grab onto the virtually identical one on the other side of the alley. This one quickly fell as well, but the man had already climbed up onto the building's roof.

Not letting his attacker get away so easily, Alex promptly shot himself upward, easily clearing the level of the roof. He was about to lunge forward onto it when he was suddenly knocked backwards by another shockwave. He hovered in midair for a few moments, all the while being near-constantly zapped by bolts of electricity, before he crashed back to the ground…

* * *

_Well… I'm still alive. I must be doing something right..._ Cole thought to himself as he watched Mercer plummet back down to street level. Knowing that the only way he'd keep surviving is if he kept some distance between himself and Mercer, he quickly glided to the next building over, electricity crackling from his palms as he slowed his descent. Sure, he could have kept attacking while Mercer was down, but he had a feeling that would have done nothing more than piss him off even more. His informant had only told him that high voltage made him think twice, he had said nothing as to whether it did anything more than temporarily incapacitate him.

Moving fast, he continued hopping across the rooftops, suddenly aware of a crashing behind him. Mercer had recovered, and was now bearing down on him, gaining at a frightening rate. In a risky move, he vaulted over one last building, extending the reach of the jump by gliding, and angled towards the edge of the island, just across the road below him. Mercer took the bait and followed, keeping pace with Cole by gliding in his own way, arms outstretched, legs trailing behind him, and a reddish mist of what might have been blood erupting in jets from his wrists and ankles. Cole drifted close to the water, then at the last moment reversed the thrust of his own glide, angling his palms forward to kill his forward motion, and dropped, clinging to the guard-rail that formed the border between concrete-covered land and the water below. Mercer, however, being both faster and heavier, was not able to preform such a feat, and splashed down into the water with a shout.

Cole lifted himself up over the rail and began moving towards a cluster of crashed cars nearby, but not before sending a few jolts of electricity into the water for good measure. Contrary to what he expected, no fish floated dead to the surface, but one very angry mutant almost instantly burst up, sailing high into the air before tumbling to the pavement, soaking wet. Cole dove behind a stationary taxicab as Mercer closed the distance between them once more. A loud, metallic crack was heard, and the taxi behind Cole was suddenly pulled away towards Mercer, who was using his whip-like arm to rapidly drag it back to him, likely to toss back at Cole in a few moments. Thinking quickly, Cole formed a small ball of electricity in one hand, then chucked it at the receding vehicle. His aim was perfect, and it stuck neatly to the cab's metal roof. Mere moments later, as Mercer lined up his sights on Cole, holding the taxi effortlessly over his head, it exploded, not only shocking Mercer but turning the taxicab into a massive shrapnel bomb as its gas tank was set alight. Shards of metal flew everywhere, and one particularly large one managed to embed itself fairly deeply in Mercer's chest. The mutant simply pulled it out, wincing almost imperceptibly as it was removed, the wound healing over almost immediately.

Once again, Cole took his chance to move to a better position while his opponent was stunned. He vaulted over another car and darted down the street, taking care to stay far away from any area that looked to be infested with infected. From what he'd seen, those places would do nothing more than give Cole more hostiles to contend with and Mercer a food source. Instead, he headed in the direction of the nearest military installation. With any luck, the soldiers would focus their energy on Mercer instead of him. He ran quickly, but just as before, he stood no chance against Mercer in terms of speed, and he could already hear the crashing footfalls that signaled his approach, as well as a sharp crack as the bladed end of his whip-like arm smacked into the pavement perhaps inches from his feet. Cole dove to his right, rapidly changing direction as something large and black lunged forward from behind him, its blurry form occupying the place where he'd just been. With a quick glance over his shoulder, Cole identified it as Mercer, looking ready to leap forward again. He was stopped, though, as Cole loosed another series of electrical bolts on him and changed his direction once more, resuming his path towards the base. As he sprinted, he hazarded a glance back, but found Mercer to be gone. Confused, but expecting an ambush, he continued on, listening carefully for the sounds of the other's movement.

* * *

Alex had realized fairly quickly that the electrical man was leading him towards a military-occupied area. It was no real worry to him, but he would have to change his tactics. Considering his current tactics weren't preforming to well, it was probably about time he did so anyway. Without warning, he suddenly cut off his chase for the moment, slipping out of his opponent's view while he took on the guise of a Blackwatch trooper. The transition was smooth and seamless, and within moments, he was just another gas mask-clad face in the crowd, anonymous. Careful not to draw attention to himself, he hurried to the base that his opponent was almost certainly trying to reach.

He walked in without much resistance, quickly and stealthily sabotaging the viral detectors placed both on the roof of the building and around the walled-off perimeter. Their annoying alarms and flashing yellow lights were expertly replaced by silence and solid green lights under the rapid tapping of his fingers on their keypads. The soldiers continued to mill about, oblivious that their primary target was now within their midst. They were equally unaware that anyone was approaching, much less that they were almost as big a potential danger as he was. With any luck, the grunts would overreact, and Alex would have one bullet-ridden corpse in place of a pursuer.

Just as a small grin spread under his mask at the thought, said pursuer jogged up to the walls of the installation, but stayed far enough away that the men inside tolerated his presence. Alex had to restrain a smug laugh as the man looked around, fully expecting a certain hooded man to come rushing down the street or plummeting off a rooftop any second now, but, of course, no attack ever came. Remaining as inconspicuous as possible, he grabbed an assault rifle off a nearby rack and slowly, almost casually walked up behind the electric man. This was just too easy. Any other day, and he would have just taken this chance to simply snatch him off the street and consume him at his leisure. That, or simply kill him where he stood.

Before he could take the chance, however, a deep thrum briefly filled the air, and for an instant, Alex felt a vague, dull ache throughout his body, gone as soon as he realized it was there. The man whirled around and immediately began attacking Alex once again, somehow having seen through his disguise. The soldiers stationed inside the base took note, and, within moments, they opened fire on the electrical man, unintentionally assisting their greatest enemy. With a nearly inaudible laugh, Alex joined in with his own weapon, forcing his opponent to flee.

* * *

Cole quickly ran from the base, both to escape the hail of bullets and once again move into a better position to attack Mercer. For the moment, at least, he was hampered by his disguise, unable to run at his typical superhuman speeds without drawing the fire of the military as well. Cole used this to his advantage, and used the brief lead he had to scan the area, both visually and electrically, for anything he could use to his advantage. His standard methods weren't working; it was time to try something a bit more radical. He found what he was looking for in a cluster of generators, stored in a small parking lot near the base, obviously for military use. The two guards at the entrance protested at his intrusion, but promptly fell silent when a resounding crash was heard further down the street, accompanied by car horns and raised voices. Knowing just who was on the way, the two soldiers slipped away as Cole started up the generators, filling the area with their mechanical rumble. He drew as much power from them as he could… and waited, standing atop the largest one.

Seconds later, Mercer, back in his standard black jacket and hood, barreled down the street, slowing only so that he could successfully make the turn into the parking lot. He paused just inside the chain link fence, seeming to realize that this might be a trap, though too late. The lights of the city, on for the twilight hours, dimmed to virtually nothing as Cole drained energy from both the generators and the city's power grid, concentrating and directing its flow into Mercer in a spectacular display of raw power. Somehow, over the deafening, thunderous crackle of the channelled electricity, Cole could have sworn he heard Mercer screaming. Unfortunately, he couldn't keep the barrage up for long, and after several long seconds, the hail of lightning dissipated with one last crack of thunder, the city lights returning, leaving Cole exhausted and Mercer laying where he'd stood, covered in the same blackened char that coated the asphalt around him, where it hadn't outright melted.

Not believing for a moment that he'd won, Cole shakily stepped down from his perch, desperate to find another source of electricity to draw from, now that he had exhausted the generators. He passed by the inert form of his opponent, skirting it as widely as he could, and walked out onto the street. Before he'd taken more than three steps, though, he felt an amazingly strong hand clamp around his ankle and begin dragging him backwards, throwing off his balance and sending him to the ground. Reflexively, he turned and fired a bolt of electricity at Mercer, who only gripped tighter as spasms wracked his body. Cole heard the bones of his ankle painfully snap, and felt the vague sensation of his skin burning under Mercer's hand. Fearful that this was Mercer beginning to consume him, Cole desperately kicked him away, causing him to finally let go. Cole scooted backwards, still keeping with his plan to stay as far away from the mutant as possible, but found himself unable to stand due to his ankle, ultimately rendering his efforts useless.

Mercer didn't look to be in much better shape himself. His entire body had been burned by the electricity, leaving his skin and clothes blackened and mutilated. His face was a particularly horrific picture, looking like the face of a burned corpse, but still managing to continue moving, and was even now slowly repairing itself in sputters of red-black biomass as he dragged himself weakly forward. Cole could even hear the irregular whistle of his breathing, but this little subtlety was one of the first things to fade. With a ragged, inhuman sound that was half grunt, half moan, Mercer's arms slowly transformed into grayish, armored versions of themselves, the muscles beneath the skin bulging visibly as the virus overwrote and reformed its structure.

"What the hell is it that you want? You know I can keep this up just as long as you can, so you might as well just give up now," Mercer raspingly called out to his opponent, still moving backwards from the advancing mutant as fast as his injury would allow.

"You're never going to believe this, but I need to talk to you," Cole replied, taking the first step toward a truce by suddenly cutting off the arcs of electricity racing across his arms.

"That's _it?_" asked Alex, not certain if this was a trap. Nonetheless, his arms returned to normal in a brief cloud of red-black. "You could have f-king told me that a little earlier!" he shouted, enraged once more.

"I _did_. You just didn't listen."

Alex slammed a fist into the ground in frustration. "Fine," he spat. "Just who the hell are you, anyway? You know who I am."

"Cole MacGrath. I'm here to determine if you're going to be a threat to the rest of the world once this is all over and the quarantine is lifted."

"Judging by the fact that I'm still alive, you don't seem to have made up your mind on that quite yet."

"The fact that _I'm_ still alive is making me lean in your favor," Cole told him. "I need to know what happened here."

"I'll tell you what I know, but not here."

With this, Alex nodded in the direction of the two guards, watching the conversation in awe from a nearby alley, one quite noticeably in the process of calling in reinforcements. He stood, subtly wavering for a moment before regaining his balance by what looked to be sheer willpower scaring his unsteadiness into submission. Already, just barely a minute after Cole had unloaded everything he'd had at him, Alex looked completely healed, if a little weak from the ordeal. Cole was also well on his way to recovery, however, and though it was still painful to walk on, his ankle would likely be as good as new within the hour.

Before Cole could protest, Alex lunged forward and grabbed him, quickly speeding up and launching them over a few cars before Cole's world turned ninety degrees as Alex ran up the side of the nearest building. How Mercer handled both the acceleration and the constant changes in perspective, he'd never know…


	10. Chapter 10

Cole and Alex found themselves standing atop one of Manhattan's numerous high-rise buildings. Nearly thirty stories up in the air, the conflict occurring below them almost seemed serene, as if it wasn't really happening, just a movie playing out in the distance. The two men looked at each other for a moment, then Cole began to speak, having finally decided where he wanted to begin.

"Alright," he sighed, "let's start at the beginning. Were you the one who released this virus?"

Alex paused, thinking over his answer, as if trying to figure it out himself. "Yes and no. The man who set this all into motion died in Penn Station, but I haven't helped much either. I assume you were the one in Times Square sending down the lightning. That… thing was Elizabeth Greene."

"Who… There was a _person_ in there?" Cole asked, somewhat stunned.

Mercer only nodded. "And I was the one who let her loose. I know now. Freeing Elizabeth Greene was a mistake. She was a monster, infecting everything she touched. She was being held captive by Gentek, under Blackwatch's supervision. I thought she was the key to all of this."

"Was she?"

"In a way. We were connected, both of us infected with related strains of the virus. She was at the center of this, ever since Hope, Idaho."

With a confused look on his face, Cole motioned for him to continue, knowing that he was likely to get a long explanation that would raise more questions than answers. He hated conspiracies.

"Hope was a Blackwatch project. The goal was to create a viral weapon that could be used to target specific racial types. But Hope went wrong. A mutated virus infected all those people, drove them mad. Their bodies crawled with hell… And at the center of it all was Elizabeth Greene. Somehow she survived, endured the virus, absorbed it, changed it, whatever. Her unique biology inspired this new bioweapons research program. This became Gentek, and Dr. Alex Mercer worked for them. There was one leak too many and General Randall out there," Alex pointed to the hazy form of the aircraft carrier floating in the water out in the distance, "stepped in to shut it down. No one was safe. Dr. Mercer fled the scene with a sample of the virus, took it as insurance if he needed it. Blackwatch cornered him at Penn Station. With his back to the wall, he released the virus on Manhattan. It became… me." He paused here, somehow finding it easier to accept what he was not than what he was. "I… am… the virus. And I, in turn, released Elizabeth Greene to infect the city a second time. Now she's dead, alright, but Randall won't accept that the virus can be stopped. With Firebreak, he'll level the city, just like Hope."

"Hold on. He's going to _nuke_ the city?" Cole asked, incredulous.

Alex nodded again. "The launch time is set for a few hours from now."

"Well," Cole asked, still processing the fact that Manhattan might not be here come sunrise, "what are we going to do about it?"

"I've got a contact who can get me onto the _Reagan_."

"Wait, stop. Is this contact of yours the same one who set up all those phone booth drops?"

At this, Mercer's brow furrowed. "You know him?"

"I met with him. He's dead."

"When?"

"Last night."

A long pause intervened as Alex took this in. "What killed him?" Another slight pause. "And what the hell were you doing talking to him?"

"We were ambushed by z- Infected. Something… tall, two-legged, with a blade for one arm-"

"Sh-, that's not good," Alex groaned, a look of recognition on his face. "I just talked with him today."

"You mean that thing can..?"

"Just like me…" Alex answered. He grit his teeth in frustration when he realized that he should have seen this coming. That thing, the Supreme Hunter, had already shown that it had at least some of his own abilities. And why wouldn't it? It had been spawned from the very parasite that had plagued him just before Dana had been captured. He'd injected it into Greene when he'd gone in to rescue his sister, and the reaction created the creature. "Wait," he remembered, cutting off his train of thought as he realized that MacGrath had left one question unanswered, "how did you get in contact with Cross in the first place?"

"Dr. Ragland gave me a map."

Mercer muttered angrily for a few moments, upset at the doctor's complete disregard for his own and his sister's safety. What if Cole had been a Blackwatch agent?

"I still don't get where he fits in in all this," Cole continued, ignoring Alex's reaction. "Was he a colleague of your-" he corrected himself, "Dr. Mercer's?"

"How'd you find him?"

"I followed you there. Now, come on, who is he?"

Now Alex's irritation was turned on himself for allowing Cole to track him so easily. True, MacGrath was no ordinary man, but a sufficiently stealthy Supersoldier could have done the same thing. "He used to work with REDLIGHT, what Greene was infected with. I needed his help, so I tracked him down." The full story was a bit more complicated than that, but he was getting tired of all the questions.

"And the woman you saved, Dana?"

Mercer's frustration spiked at this question. "That's not important right now," he said angrily. With an exasperated sigh, he looked out towards the _Reagan_, thinking about his plan ahead. "If you're right, I've not only got to diffuse that bomb, but take that creature out for good."

"I'm coming with you," Cole told him forcefully. He knew that Alex could probably handle either task, but the risk of failure was too high for Cole to just wait around and hope he could handle both.

"No, you're not. I still need it to get me onto the _Reagan_. It sees us together, and it knows that _I_ know, and the whole thing could be off," Alex explained. "You're staying here."

Cole was about to protest, but Mercer's expression made it clear that that particular discussion was over. Besides, he did have a point. "Fine. You stop the nuke, kill that thing that ate Cross-"

"Consume General Randall," Alex interrupted.

"That, too," Cole continued, a noticeably disgusted look on his face. He was about to ask if it was really necessary, but had a feeling it was futile, and instead continued along his original train of thought. "Then what? There's still zombies everywhere."

"Infected."

"Whatever." He'd really had it with this insistence on calling them "Infected." Honestly, what difference did it make?

"It's only a matter of time now before Blackwatch wipes them out. When I killed Greene, I effectively cut off their head, destroyed their leader. They have no direction now, they're just a bunch of-"

"Zombies," Cole finished, a smile creeping across his face.

Alex gave him a look, but admitted that he was right.

"Ok, but what about other leaders? Could another runner take over in her place?"

There was a brief silence. "Just how much did Cross tell you?"

"Oh, he told me all about you."

"I know what you're getting at. The answer is no, I won't. Not even to have them all kill themselves. I tried tapping into the hivemind once… even the weak connection I established was almost too much for me."

Alex looked impatiently towards the West, and through a break in the buildings he saw that the sun had fully set. He had to move, "Cross" was almost certainly waiting for him now to continue with their plan. He was anxious and on edge, ready for the inevitable fight and wanting it to be over as soon as possible. This was the end of it all, he could feel it, and each moment that passed was a moment that could have been spent stopping this madness.

"You wanted to know whether I was too much of a threat to be left alive," he said, turning to face the man who'd tracked him for God only knew how long as he climbed atop the small ledge encircling the top of the building. "Hopefully this will answer that for you." With that, he leapt into the air, and in a few moments, he had completely disappeared from Cole's view, leaving him alone on the rooftop as if there's never been anyone there in the first place.

* * *

"You think you're ready?" The distorted voice of Cross, or at least the thing that had eaten Cross, asked. The sky behind him was starting to darken, but the city still glowed bright, lit both by electric lights and raging fires as the two factions continued to battle nearby.

"I was made for this," Alex replied, finally turning and facing him after the long conversation they had had. The "Captain" had had a lot of the same questions as MacGrath, but was more concerned with what had happened on the island and the conspiracy behind it, less so with Mercer himself. Obviously, he wasn't the only one trying to fill in the blanks.

Satisfied with Alex's answer, the impostor removed his white face mask, allowing him to speak with his normal voice. "Citadel command, this is Captain Cross," he said into his radio. "Mission accomplished. I have Colonel Taggart in custody, ready for extraction."

A confirmation crackled over the line, then the device fell silent. On cue, a rustling noise was heard, and the form of Taggart stood in place of Alex's. Following the plan, "Cross" drew a pair of handcuffs from his belt, motioning for "Taggart" to turn around. They were utterly useless against the arms they were placed on, but appearances were everything in this ploy. Several tense minutes followed as the pair awaited the extraction chopper, each mentally rehearsing their roles. Alex knew he would have to play along until even after the two of them had stepped onto the _Reagan_. He didn't know what the Supreme Hunter had planned, whether he would be left alone long enough to disable the bomb and kill Randall, but he didn't want to get into a fight with the thing any sooner than he had to.

The pulsing thrum of an approaching helicopter snapped him out of his thoughts. Looking as resigned and worried as he could, he stepped into the vehicle, "Cross" right behind him. The short trip to the aircraft carrier seemed to stretch on and on, brought on by the excitable nervousness that came with sitting less than a foot from the only creature left alive that could potentially kill him. Alex was ready to fight, ready to consume and slaughter anything that stood in his way, but he forced the thoughts down, instead focusing on Taggart's memories, letting his persona bleed into his own for the moment. Finally, the helicopter touched down on the deck, shutting off its engine as the platform below it descended. The side doors opened, revealing the dark interior of the ship. General Randall was already waiting for them close by, but not another soul could be seen.

"Report!"

"Taggart's order led directly to the collapse of the central blue zone."

Before the "Captain" could even finish his sentence, Randall had already taken out a pistol, aimed it at "Taggart's" head, and fired. Though he felt virtually no pain, Alex fell to the ground, going limp and making as great an effort as he could to stop his body from healing itself, just for a few minutes while he waited for Randall to be distracted. Just a quick, stealthy consume, and he'd have one less problem to deal with.

"Welcome home," the General said to "Cross" with surprising nonchalance. "Operation Redlight is over."

As the two walked away, Alex remained still, barely even breathing, thankful for his practice at appearing dead when he was trying to get to McMullen. Hopefully this mission would end a lot better. The voices fading, he slowly and quietly got to his feet, following cautiously behind Randall, inching closer and closer until he was certain he could reach out and easily grab him. Still talking with the "Captain," the now group of three walked up to the nuclear missile, ready for launch in a small cart that could be angled upward for use as a guide. The bomb was electronically timed to go off in just over six minutes.

_Damn, we're cutting this close…_ Alex thought as he stood behind his target, listening to his last words.

"When you have a festering wound, you cauterize it. We'll be saving millions of American li-" the rest of the word devolved into a choking gurgle as Alex gripped him tightly around the throat, cutting off even that as he quickly snapped his neck and let the red-black tendrils do the rest. "Cross" backed away as Randall was consumed and Alex returned to looking like himself, a flood of memories rushing to the forefront of Alex's mind. He saw it all, the entire Hope operation, from the moment the military had been called in to the entire town's destruction at the hands of a tactical nuke. Two things had survived, though, escorted out of the area under strict quarantine and containment procedures. One was Elizabeth Greene. The other was her child, born mere hours before Hope was wiped off the map. Greene had eventually been transported to the Gentek building in New York, but where the child had gone, and for that matter what it even _was_ was yet another mystery for Alex to unravel. Always more questions than answers, always more questions than answers.

"You bastard, you could have stopped all this," he muttered to himself, starting to once again pay attention to the here and now instead of the recollections of a dead man. "You let it happen."

In silence, still shaken from the new information, Alex walked slowly to the bomb's control panel, pretending to disarm it as he watched the screen's timer count down past five minutes, beeping a warning to anyone nearby. At the five minute mark, hydraulics below the deck activated, raising the platform up to the main deck of the carrier, taking the nuke, Alex, and "Cross" with it into the quickly cooling night air. There were a few quiet footsteps behind him as "Cross" approached, and Alex subtly tensed. He partially turned to bring the impostor into his field of vision and, without even the slightest warning, whirled around and landed a shattering right hook on the man's jaw, knocking him to the floor. Before he could react, Alex was upon him, beating the creature senseless with a flurry of blows to its head. There was an inhuman gurgling as "Cross's" form began to shift, the dark uniform melting away to be replaced by pink, tumor-covered skin.

Knowing that he didn't have the time to go toe to toe with the rapidly recovering monster, Alex searched around the deck of the carrier for a quick and easy solution. He spied a spool of heavy cable, normally used to bring incoming aircraft to a halt, and an idea came to mind. Landing one last BLACKLIGHT-enhanced punch on the Supreme Hunter, he transformed his arm into a whip-like appendage, not even waiting for the red and black tendrils to clear away before he shot it out at the coil of cable. He felt a satisfying thud as the claws embedded into the metallic spool, and immediately yanked it back, ripping its bolts free of the deck. With the large container still in one now human-looking hand, he backed away from the infected beast, letting it stumble to its feet before he leapt forward, shouldering it backwards onto the nuclear missile. It fell, crashing into the cart and nearly knocking the nuke free of its guide rails. Working as quickly as he could, Alex wrapped the cable around the towering creature and the cart, binding the two tightly together. Perhaps realizing what he was planning, it struggled fiercely, threatening to snap the few loops he'd already managed to get around it. With all his strength, he tightened the cable tight enough to cut into the beast's tumor-covered skin. Infected blood, deep purple-red, dripped onto the deck as Alex threw a few more coils around the bellowing, howling creature, finishing off his work with a few crude knots to keep the cable secure.

_Now what?_ he thought. Now that the cart had a very angry Supreme Hunter lashed to it, he wasn't going to be able to input Randall's code to stop the detonation, or redirect it to have it fire off towards the ocean. That left one option…

Digging into the memories of the pilots he'd consumed, Alex chained the entire package, cart, missile, and still shrieking creature, to a nearby helicopter with almost practiced ease. He climbed in, waiting for the rotors to get up to speed, an agonizingly slow process, before he urged the chopper upward and eastward towards the ocean and the rising moon. It would have been a beautiful sight, and it might have held Alex's attention for a few moments if he hadn't been too busy straining the engine of the craft in an effort to get far enough out to safely drop the nuke. The helicopter was frustratingly sluggish from all the weight it was carrying, both from the cart attached below and the unnatural mass of its pilot. With little time left, Alex released the cart, sending it into the water below and dragging the Supreme Hunter with it.

Not certain of how long he had before the bomb detonated, he spun the chopper around and started flying towards the mainland, only to be overtaken by the nuke's shockwave mere seconds later…

* * *

An explosion shook the evening as a stray spark ignited the fuel tank of the helicopter Cole had tried to hitch a ride on. He hadn't even had a chance to inform the pilot of where to take him, and now he was desperately gliding away from the falling wreckage, not wanting to be caught under it. Feet safely on the ground, he turned back and cursed at the mess he'd inadvertently caused, running to the nearly destroyed cockpit to try to rescue the pilot and gunner still trapped inside. With a grunt, he pried open the door and dragged the two men out and onto the pavement a safe distance away. He bent down over the wounded pilot and, building up a charge, sent a jolt of his own energy into the man, healing him almost instantly. Not wasting any time, he turned to the gunner and did the same, then left quickly before the two could regain their senses.

"Keys?" he heard one ask as he rounded a nearby corner.

"No, I don't know what the hell that was either," the other replied, his answer fading as Cole put more distance between them and himself.

As he jogged away, he ran though a number of scenarios in his mind, trying to think of some way to get out onto the carrier and help Mercer defeat that… thing. He stopped at the edge of the island, looking out towards the _Reagan_ floating deceptively peacefully out on the water… the deadly, deadly barrier of water. His only way out there was to somehow fly his way there, and as he'd just found out, helicopters fell squarely into the category of things that blew up when he touched them. Frustrated, he threw up his hands, giving up on the seemingly impossible task. Mercer had supposedly beaten this thing before, it was up to him to do it again, much to Cole's vexation. Sighing, he changed his course and instead headed for St. Paul's Hospital, where Dana would likely still be waiting.

Running though the streets of Manhattan, cutting around those few areas still infested with zombies, he considered what was left to do. With the military without their fanatical general and his nuke, chances were good that they'd just continue to clean up what was left of the infection. If Mercer was to be believed, it wouldn't be that difficult, compared to the nearly three weeks of hell they'd already been through. Either way, it'd already been over a week since he'd left Empire City and, ultimately, he'd done what he'd came here to do. It was time to hit the road and start heading south, back home.

Finally arriving at the hospital, he quietly pushed open the door, walking into the room Dana had claimed as her own for the time being. She was, as usual, engaged in her work on her laptop, her fingers flying across the keyboard in a flurry of soft clicks. Hearing him enter, she looked up and smiled, the expression making Cole feel sick at heart, knowing that he was going to be gone before the sun rose again. Seeing the subtle melancholy in his face, she asked what was wrong.

"I'm sorry," he replied, stepping forward and sitting on the other bed, "but I have to start leaving."

"Going back to Empire City?"

He nodded. "I think things are actually finally starting to die down here."

"You really think so?" she asked, almost not believing that this ordeal would ever end.

"The zombies are wandering around like zombies now, not like an army like they were before," Cole explained, paraphrasing what Mercer had said earlier.

Sarcastically, still not convinced that this could actually be ending, she asked, "Then the military just mops up everything up, right?"

"They're going to have to." With this, he motioned out the window, the shades pulled back to reveal the rising moon outside. "I ran into Alex Mercer while I was out there. He's certain that they've got a nuke ready to go out on that aircraft carrier, and he's not going to wait until they have a chance to fire it. In fact, he's probably dealing with it ri-"

His words were cut off by a deafening boom as a blinding light flashed behind him. With a shocked expression on their faces, they both turned to the window. Outside, the glow from the explosion was just starting to fade as the shockwave hit, rattling the windows and shaking the entire hospital. In a panic, Ragland rushed into the room.

"That was just offshore!" he exclaimed, looking out the window at the slowly dimming eastern sky. "What the hell is going on?"

"That," Cole said, astonished, "was the nuke."

"What happened?" Dana asked.

"I don't know." Cole squinted as he scanned the view outside. "I don't see any trails from it being fired. Looks like it was just dropped out there. From what Mercer told me, it probably was on a set timer, blew up in its own."

"Do you think Mercer survived?" she asked, doing her best not to let concern creep into her voice.

"I doubt it. He probably didn't have much time to get it that far out and come back. That shockwave would have knocked down anything he was flying."

The three fell silent after that, apprehensive of what would happen now.

* * *

Having pulled himself back together on the rocks that passed for the shore of Manhattan island, a wholly unpleasant experience, Alex found himself walking through the night, not sure of his destination. With the light from the explosion now nothing more than a dim glow behind him, he contemplated his place in the world, what he would do next. He'd gotten his answers, however painful they'd been, and now that the Infection was collapsing in on itself and the military were on their way to victory, what was there left for him to do? There were still questions unanswered, true, there always were, but what then, once even those mysteries were solved? Was he really about to follow this conspiracy to the ends of the Earth, leaving a trail of corpses behind him? His victory in finding and killing those responsible for the virus that had nearly wiped out Manhattan seemed rather hollow now. Countless people had died regardless, a significant percentage by his own hands, virtually all if he counted himself responsible for those taken by Greene and REDLIGHT. Hunting down the secrets behind his and Greene's existence hadn't done much other than satisfy his need to know, to fill in the blanks as to _why_ everything had been happening. Now he knew the truth, now Manhattan was safe, now _Dana_ was safe.

He supposed that anyone watching the denotation of the nuke figured he was dead now. To be honest, he'd thought so too as the blast had overtaken him. Surprisingly, this had somehow relieved him at the time, though he couldn't remember the half-formed reason why. For the moment, though, he was probably off of Blackwatch's radar. Maybe this was his chance to finally slip away. First though, he needed to see Dana. Following her capture, he'd been paranoid about visiting the hospital, for fear that someone or something would track him there and get their hands on her again. Someone already had, but he had been fortunate that MacGrath hadn't been an agent of either the military or the Infected. He deeply hoped that Ragland had been able to do something for her, that she wasn't still in a coma. He was ready to leave Manhattan behind, and he didn't want to do it without Dana. Even if he had no right to keep thinking of her as his sister...

* * *

In the hospital, Dana was sitting solemnly on one of the beds, Cole beside her. He was beginning to suspect, from her reaction, that she'd known Mercer well. He _had_ saved her after all. Perhaps she was his girlfriend, or, dear God he hoped not, his sister.

"You know what," she suddenly said, her voice turning frustrated, "I've had it with this f-king city. I think I'll leave as soon as that goddamn quarantine gets lifted."

"Do you have any idea where you'd go?" he asked, concerned, yet, despite his better judgement, seeing an opportunity.

She sighed, saddened. "I'll figure something out."

Cole paused, uncomfortable, before he finally got out what he'd been thinking. "I hear Empire City's nice this time of year," he said, a thinly veiled suggestion.

They looked at each other for some time, and before they knew exactly what was happening, Cole found himself comforting her with a hug. It was at this moment that, following Murphy's law, Alex walked through the doorway.

"MacGrath!" he shouted angrily, surprising both of them and ending the embrace.

"Mercer!" Cole responded, shocked by his sudden appearance.

"Alex!" Dana exclaimed happily, relieved to see him again after she had believed him dead. Getting up off the hospital bed, she gave him a hug of his own, but stopped it short as he subtly pulled back in her arms.

"Dana?" Alex asked, concerned and confused about what he'd just witnessed.

"Cole?" Dana questioned. She had a feeling why Alex had been so upset that they'd been together.

"Dana!" Cole was stunned.

At some point during the reunion, Ragland had come to investigate all the shouting. Noticing him in the doorway, Alex turned, ready to scold the doctor at length for having trusted MacGrath at all.

"Ragland!" he bellowed. The doctor, knowing exactly what was coming, retreated back into the hallway, followed closely by Mercer, looking as menacing as ever. Alone again, there was an uncomfortable silence between the two of them.

"Don't tell me he's the brother you were talking about… the overprotective one?" he said, breaking the quiet. He already knew what the answer was, he just wanted Dana to confirm it.

"He is." Though she wasn't looking at him, Dana could practically hear Cole wince.

"Shit…"

**A/N: Yes, this entire goddamned thing was just a lead-up for that final scene. The. Entire. Thing. Obviously, I'm not one for drabbles. You give me a funny little idea, I write an epic.**

**Well, it's been a long, long ride, but I'm glad you've stuck with me through my bouts of procrastination. Will there be a sequel? I don't know, it doesn't look like it right now. Maybe if Prototype gets a sequel itself. Until then, I've got no plot.**

**Goodnight everybody!**


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